American companies raised just around $13 billion in seed- through later- and growth-stage funding so far this month, per Crunchbase data. Unless momentum suddenly picks up, that puts March on track to deliver just a fraction of investment tallies from either of the prior two months, as charted below. Given that, there's a case to be made against reading too much into the topline numbers. After all, most of February's huge tally came from a single round ' OpenAI's record-setting $110 billion fundraise ' that happened to be announced on the second-to-last day of the month. The March startup funding slowdown also coincides with the Iran War, which commenced on Feb. 28. Broad stock indexes have fallen in tandem in subsequent weeks, although Monday did bring a much-awaited partial rebound. Notably, this month's funding deceleration is mostly a U.S. phenomenon. European startup funding, by contrast, actually hit its highest point of the year in March, boosted by megarounds for AI...
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