Methodology

This is a conservative, disclosed-only benchmark by design: Crunchbase News explicitly does not count undisclosed funding rounds as venture funding rounds (along with debt financings, secondary transactions, grants, and other non-equity assistance). That improves transparency and reproducibility, but it also means totals can be lower than vendor datasets that estimate or infer undisclosed dollars.

What we count as venture risk capital

Included

Priced equity venture rounds (Series A/B/C… and comparable venture rounds) and convertibles (SAFE / convertible notes), treated as venture risk capital.

Excluded

True debt / non-dilutive financing (credit facilities), grants/loans and other non-equity assistance, and secondary transactions (tenders, liquidity events, existing-shareholder sales).

Independence / control rule

We deduct financings where the company is not startup-independent before the deal because it is already controlled by a corporate parent (subsidiary / parent-led round), or a controlling-owner corporate group.

“Absurd giants” valuation filter (≥ $100B)

We deduct rounds where disclosed post-money valuation is ≥ $100B. Rationale: at $100B+, these private companies operate in the same value range as the world’s largest corporations.

Note: If a deducted mega-round contains mixed instruments (e.g., debt components), it is still fully removed under the ≥$100B rule. Crunchbase also separately excludes debt financings from venture funding rounds in its methodology.