Crunchbase: San Francisco startups hit a record 1,404 seed deals in 2025; the number of NYC seed deals has declined over the past three years, to 666 in 2025
Context & Ripple Effects
Earlier coverage showed New York as a major startup-financing center, while Silicon Valley retained a large concentration of venture activity even as its share of US funding fell to a decade low in 2022. Florida and Miami also gained attention during the 2022 funding reset, when California, Massachusetts, and New York saw sharp year-over-year funding declines.
The new seed-deal figures make the geographic divergence more concrete at the company-formation stage: San Francisco has expanded its lead in seed activity while New York's deal count has contracted for three consecutive years.
First-order effects
- San Francisco founders and seed investors are operating in a denser local market for early-stage financings, with a record 1,404 deals recorded in 2025.
- New York's seed ecosystem faces a smaller flow of newly financed startups, with 666 deals in 2025 after three years of decline.
Second-order effects
- Investors, accelerators, and startup service providers may concentrate more sourcing and support capacity in San Francisco, where the volume of new seed-backed companies is rising.
- New York investors may face stronger pressure to compete for a reduced local seed pipeline or expand their geographic sourcing; founders there may encounter a more selective financing environment.
Third-order effects
- If the divergence persists, the next cohort of venture-backed companies—and the later-stage financing, hiring, and acquisition activity that follows it—could become more concentrated in San Francisco.
- The data point complicates the narrative of a durable broad geographic dispersal of US venture activity: capital can spread at later stages or to new hubs while seed formation still recentralizes in an established ecosystem.
The trend: US startup finance is showing renewed concentration at the seed stage, with San Francisco strengthening its role as a primary formation hub while New York's early-stage deal flow weakens.