The AI frenzy has divided the VC market, as the gap between top and bottom performers has more than doubled for 2024 funds compared to funds from 2017 to 2021
Context & Ripple Effects
AI venture funding had already become unusually concentrated: 41% of U.S. AI startup funding in 2025 went to 10 companies, amid preempted rounds for top AI startups. The subsequent quarter brought a record $297 billion in global VC investment, with AI taking 81% and four companies accounting for 64% of the total.
The reported widening between 2024-vintage fund winners and laggards puts a fund-performance consequence on that deal-level concentration. It suggests access to a small set of large AI financings is increasingly separating VC portfolios.
First-order effects
- Top-performing 2024 VC funds gain a clearer fundraising and reputation advantage over bottom-performing peers as the performance spread more than doubles versus 2017–2021 vintages.
- VCs without access to the leading AI rounds face portfolios less exposed to the investments driving the current funding boom.
Second-order effects
- Competition among VCs for the most sought-after AI companies intensifies further, reinforcing the preemptive-round behavior documented in the race for elite AI deals.
- Limited partners assessing newer VC funds have a stronger incentive to distinguish managers by their ability to access concentrated AI opportunities rather than broad exposure to the startup market.
Third-order effects
- If AI funding remains concentrated among a handful of companies and investors, venture returns may become more dependent on a manager's access to frontier-lab-scale rounds than on diversified early-stage selection.
- The VC market is shifting toward a barbell structure in which a small group of AI-specialist or well-connected firms captures disproportionate performance while the long tail competes for less scarce opportunities.
The trend: AI is concentrating venture capital into fewer companies and, increasingly, producing wider dispersion among the funds able to invest in them.