Active Startup Investors Didn’t Hold Back In May

These days, U.S. startup investors are putting more money to work than ever, but they’re concentrating capital into a smaller number of deals.

That trend is reflected in the May tallies for most active investors. Crunchbase data showed top dealmakers weren’t setting any records for deal count. However, they wrote some enormous checks for those they did back.

Familiar names dominated the most active investor ranks, including regulars on our list like

Andreessen Horowitz

General Catalyst

and

Y Combinator

. The highest spending investors, meanwhile, included lead backers in

Anthropic

’s massive Series H last week.

For a more granular view, we broke out ranks below by category, including active lead backers, highest spending investors, and most prolific venture dealmakers.

Busiest lead investors

General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz were the most active lead investors in May, leading or co-leading six rounds each. This included some exceptionally large deals, such as

Anduril

’s $5 billion Series H, co-led by Andreessen, and Cognition’s $1 billion Series D, co-led by

General Catalyst

Lightspeed Venture Partners

was the next-busiest lead investor, with five deals, followed by

Upfront Ventures

and

Index Ventures

, with four rounds each. For a broader perspective, below we chart out the 10 most active lead investors by deal count:

Highest spending lead investors

Of course, the most prolific dealmakers aren’t always those leading the largest rounds. For May, investors who led deals with the highest aggregate value were all co-lead backers in Anthropic’s

massive $50 billion Series H

. This included

Sequoia Capital

Altimeter Capital

Dragoneer

, and

Greenoaks

, along with

Capital Group

Coatue

D1 Capital Partners

GIC

Iconiq Capital

and

which co-led the investment.

Next on the list were

Thrive Capital

and Andreessen Horowitz, which co-led Anduril’s $5 billion fundraise. To complete the picture, below we rank the 17 investors who led or co-led May rounds with the highest aggregate value.

Most active venture dealmakers

When we stop focusing exclusively on lead investors, the list of most active dealmakers changes up some, but not dramatically.

The most active investors in rounds of $5 million or more for May include

Y Combinator

, Andreessen Horowitz, and General Catalyst. Y Combinator typically ranks high on this list, as it commonly co-invests as a non-lead investor in follow-on rounds for startups it incubated.

For a broader picture of most active venture backers, below we ranked the top 10 for May.

Same dealmakers, bigger rounds

Overall, May’s active investor tallies painted a picture of a startup funding scene still dominated by familiar names.

Given the huge funds raised in recent years by big-name venture and growth investors, it’s no surprise to see them putting capital to work. Increasingly, they’re doing that in the form of larger rounds, with capital flowing in particular flowing to consensus picks in AI.