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Top Venture Capital Firms Dominate AI and Fintech Investments
CB Insights has released its annual Smart Money list, highlighting the world's 25 best-performing venture capital investors over the past decade. Among these are Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed, which are at the forefront of funding the artificial intelligence wave.
Over the past 18 months, agent-related categories have led deal activity in AI, with coding agents and copilots securing 28 deals. In 2023, these VC investors backed 52% of new AI unicorns, a trend that continued in 2024 with 73% and 2025 year-to-date (YTD) with 77%.
Infrastructure remains active in AI, with 17 deals involving large language model (LLM) developers over the same period. One such company is Tines, an AI orchestration platform for security and IT teams based in Ireland, which is part of the portfolios of Accel, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed.
Torq, an Israeli firm specializing in autonomous security operations, is also part of the portfolios of these VC investors. Another Israeli-based company, Cato Networks, a network security company, is also backed by these prominent investors.
Promising startups in these VC investors' portfolios include Zepto, Bilt, and Glean. Notable transactions in fintech include Rippling's US$450 million Series G, Mercury's US$300 million Series C, and Ramp's US$200 million Series D.
The 25 VC investors on CB Insights' Smart Money 2025 list are 6.5 times more likely than the average VC to back a future unicorn. These investors have also shown a strong focus on cybersecurity, with CB Insights highlighting it as the likeliest near-term exit opportunity for their portfolios.
In the fintech sector, these VC investors are the most active, with General Catalyst leading the way, participating in 19 rounds in H1 2025. Since 2015, these VC investors have backed 80 companies that have exited at US$10 billion+, a testament to their successful investment strategies.
Among their most widely backed companies are Chainguard, Figma, and Wiz, each with seven of these top VC firms. However, the search results do not contain any information about which investment firms are on the CB Insights Smart Money 2025 list or which have made the most cybersecurity sector investments outside the USA in recent years.
In March 2025, Google made a significant move by acquiring Wiz, an Israeli-American cloud security company, for US$32 billion. This acquisition underscores the importance of cybersecurity in the tech industry and the strategic investments made by these top VC firms.
These VC investors achieve 2.2 times more exits per firm, whether through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or initial public offerings (IPOs), further demonstrating their success in the venture capital space.
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