New York Is Raising More Money From Fewer Startups
New York startups raised $22.1 billion through September. That is already more than the city raised in all of 2025, and there are still three months left in the year. But look at the third quarter more closely. NYC startups raised about the same money as in Q3 last year, $5.6 billion, in 43% fewer deals. The money did not leave New York. It went to fewer companies.
A record year, with a quiet summer
| Quarter | Capital | Deals |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 2026 | ~$7.5B | 246 |
| Q2 2026 | ~$8.9B | 233 |
| Q3 2026 | ~$5.6B | 137 |
Q2 was New York’s best quarter since 2021. Q3 started slowly. August was the quietest month of the year, with $838 million across 34 deals. Then September brought $2.99 billion, the city’s third-biggest month of 2026.
This is part of a national trend. In the first half of the year, about 86% of all US venture dollars went to AI companies. New York gets its share of that money. What has changed is how the money is divided.
Fewer checks, bigger checks
In the first half of 2026, New York did more deals than a year earlier. The drop came in the summer. September 2025 had 95 deals. September 2026 had 50.
The checks got bigger as the count went down. The average NYC round this year is about $36 million, up from about $23 million in 2025. In August, the median NYC deal was $14.2 million, twice the national median. Series C and later rounds took 71% of the money that month.
AI is now the minimum for getting funded. In August, at least half of NYC’s funded companies were AI-native. Investors no longer pay extra because a company uses AI. They pay for traction.
One note: deal counts often increase over time as late SEC filings are counted. AlleyWatch already raised its June number from $3.9 billion to $4.7 billion. The Q3 gap may get smaller, but the direction is clear.
Healthcare had the biggest quarter
When you list the largest Q3 rounds, many of them are healthcare companies: Precision Neuroscience ($250M), Rightway ($155M), Forus ($150M), Cityblock Health ($116M), Pearl Health ($110M), K Health ($58.9M) and Flagler Health ($50M). None of them is a typical consumer health app. They work on how care is delivered, billed and paid for.
The rest of the list has a similar pattern. EliseAI ($350M) automates work for landlords and medical offices. Norm Ai ($120M) reads regulations and enforces them. CAIS ($170M), Gauntlet ($125M), RQD Clearing ($74M) and HIFI ($37M) build systems that move money. In each case, AI is applied to an old, regulated and complicated industry, and New York has deep expertise in all of them.
New York does not get the very large checks for chips, defense and energy. In August, the city had 19% of the country’s late-stage deals but only 6% of the late-stage dollars. Those megadeals mostly go to companies elsewhere.
Four companies that show where the money is going
EliseAI raised $350 million at a $4 billion valuation, led by a16z and Bessemer. Its AI answers renters and patients: leasing questions, scheduling and insurance checks. Its valuation was about $2.2 billion just 13 months ago. It is also opening a second engineering hub in San Francisco, which shows that NYC companies still hire on both coasts.
Profound raised $180 million at $1.8 billion, led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, less than two years after it was founded. It shows brands how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini talk about them. If people ask a chatbot instead of searching Google, brands need to know what the chatbot tells them. This new category came out of New York’s marketing and media industry.
Precision Neuroscience raised $250 million, led by Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square. It makes a very thin brain implant that sits on the surface of the brain instead of inside it. The FDA cleared it in 2025 for short-term use. Hard tech can raise large rounds in New York when it has regulatory approval to show.
General Intuition raised $220 million at $6.2 billion. It trains AI on billions of video game clips so that robots and machines can learn to act in the real world. Its valuation was reported at $2.3 billion in June. At the top of the market, valuations can change in weeks.
What comes next
October started slowly, with $488 million across 10 deals in the first 12 days. The size of a Series A also keeps going up. The average NYC Series A was $20.4 million this summer, up from $16.8 million a year earlier, so fewer companies qualify. Wonder plans to go public in early 2027. A large NYC IPO would show late-stage investors that they can exit their investments.
New York is having its best venture year since 2021. But the total numbers make it look easier to raise money than it is. The money is in the city, and investors give it to companies that already have traction.