What’s funding like in the creator economy right now?

All funding deals in the creator economy over the last 24 months

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Creator Economy.

Is creator economy funding actually healthier right now?

Creator economy funding is healthier for the companies that can already prove they are working, but the overall fundraising market has become much harder to enter.

We counted at least $4.16 billion of funding from September 20, 2025 to September 19, 2026, compared with $897.8 million during the previous 12 months. Taken alone, that looks like an extraordinary rebound.

The rest of the numbers tell a different story. Deals fell from 87 to 56, and only 54 companies raised money versus 82 a year earlier. At the same time, the median round increased from $3.6 million to $6 million. Later-stage financings also became much more common.

So today, more money is going into a much smaller group of companies. For the startups that make it through the filter, fundraising can be very good. For the average creator-economy company trying to raise, the market is narrower than it was a year ago.

Market measure	Latest 12 months	Previous 12 months	Change
Total funding	≥$4.159B	$897.8M	+363%
Deals	56	87	-35.6%
Funded companies	54	82	-34.1%
Median round	$6.0M	$3.6M	+66.7%
First financings	19	24	-20.8%
Later-stage deal share	23.2%	9.2%	+14.0 pp
Disclosed lead investors	57	77	-26.0%
HQ countries represented	16	21	-23.8%

Is creator economy funding really booming, or is Kling doing most of the work?

The creator economy funding boom is real at the very top, but Beijing Kling makes the headline number look far bigger than the underlying market.

The Kling AI restructuring produced about $2.795 billion of committed subscriptions. Kuaishou's stock-exchange filing shows $2.028 billion from the initial investors and another $766.39 million committed by additional investors. The deal alone represents 67.2% of all creator-economy capital in the latest period.

And this was an unusual transaction. The financing accompanied the carve-out of Kling AI assets into Beijing Kling rather than a normal venture round for a standalone startup.

Remove Kling and funding drops from $4.16 billion to roughly $1.36 billion. That still beats the previous period, but suddenly the gap looks far less spectacular.

The top of the market was strong beyond Kling too. Suno raised $250 million and later more than $400 million, while Higgsfield and ShopMy raised $80 million and $70 million respectively.

The better reading today is that a few scaled creator businesses can attract enormous checks. That is very different from saying the whole creator economy is enjoying a fourfold funding boom.

Outlier test	Latest 12 months	Previous 12 months	Change
Total capital	≥$4.159B	$897.8M	+363%
Capital excluding >$50M rounds	$564.8M	$510.3M	+10.7%
Capital excluding >$100M rounds	$714.8M	$747.8M	-4.4%
Largest deal / total capital	67.2%	16.7%	+50.5 pp
Top 3 / total capital	82.8%	36.5%	+46.3 pp
Top 5 / total capital	86.4%	48.7%	+37.7 pp
Top 10 / total capital	92.0%	63.7%	+28.3 pp

Are fewer creator economy startups getting funded today?

Yes. Creator economy funding is reaching far fewer companies these days, even though the startups that do raise often get bigger checks.

We found 56 financings in the latest period, down from 87. The number of funded companies dropped almost as much, from 82 to 54.

That distinction is useful because it tells us the fall is not simply caused by the same companies doing fewer repeat rounds. There are genuinely fewer businesses getting capital.

The slowdown was also persistent. The latest period averaged 4.7 deals per rolling month versus 7.3 previously, yet there was no zero-deal month. Fundraising did not suddenly freeze for one quarter and then recover. The market simply ran at a lower transaction rate throughout the year.

Geographic breadth narrowed too, from 21 represented HQ countries to 16.

If someone looked only at total dollars, they would miss one of the biggest changes in creator economy funding: access to capital became much less broad.

Did the funding bar just get higher for creator economy startups?

The funding bar for creator economy startups looks clearly higher now, especially at the small end of the market.

Only 35.8% of disclosed rounds were below $5 million in the latest period, down from 62.8% a year earlier. In absolute terms, the number of sub-$5 million financings collapsed from 54 to 19.

Meanwhile, the $5 million to $20 million band became the most common round size. It accounted for 37.7% of disclosed financings, up from 24.4%.

Larger rounds became more common as well. Financings of $50 million or more represented 15.1% of disclosed deals, compared with just 5.8% previously.

This helps explain why the median round rose so much while the number of funded companies fell. Investors are still writing checks, but the center of the market has moved upward.

For an early startup, that means the easy $1 million to $3 million institutional round appears much less common than it was one year ago. These days, the companies actually closing rounds are increasingly raising at a larger scale.

Are investors still backing new creator startups, or mostly doubling down on winners?

Creator economy investors still fund new startups, but most ordinary capital is currently going back into companies that have already proved themselves.

There were 19 first financings in the latest period versus 24 previously. Because total deal activity fell even faster, first financings actually increased from 27.6% to 33.9% of all deals.

The dollar figure can be misleading. First financings received almost $2.9 billion, but Beijing Kling accounts for roughly $2.795 billion of that amount because the newly structured company is classified as receiving its first financing.

Take Kling out and first-financing capital falls to about $99 million. Follow-on rounds then account for roughly 93% of the remaining disclosed capital.

The companies absorbing those follow-on dollars are easy to recognize. Suno raised twice during the period. Agentio moved from a $12 million Series A to a $40 million Series B. ShopMy followed its $77.5 million Series B with another $70 million financing.

As we saw above, fewer companies are getting funded overall. Among the big conventional checks, investors are leaning heavily toward companies they already know.

Has creator economy funding moved upmarket?

Creator economy funding has moved noticeably upmarket, with much more activity now happening beyond Seed and Series A.

Seed still produces the most deals, but its share fell from 55.2% to 48.2%. Series A dropped more sharply, from 25.3% to 16.1%.

Series B went the other way. There were seven Series B rounds in the latest period versus five previously, despite the overall market shrinking by more than a third. Growth Equity increased from one deal to three, and the current period also produced a Series D+ financing through Suno.

Among deals where the stage is known, later-stage financings increased from 10.3% to 26.5% of activity.

Company age adds an interesting twist. The median funded company actually became younger, falling from 3.7 years old to 2.9 years.

Investors therefore do not seem to be waiting around for companies to age. A smaller group of startups is simply moving through the funding curve faster.

Do creator economy startups need more proof before investors write a check now?

The biggest creator economy rounds today are increasingly going to companies with hard evidence of usage, revenue or repeatable commercial demand.

Higgsfield is probably the clearest example. When the company announced an $80 million Series A extension, it said it had reached a $200 million annual run rate in less than nine months, attracted more than 15 million users and was generating 4.5 million videos per day.

Kling had commercial numbers too. Kuaishou reported more than RMB650 million of Kling AI revenue in the first quarter of 2026, up more than 300% year over year, and said the product had reached roughly a $500 million annualized revenue run rate by March.

Agentio raised its $40 million Series B after reporting 5x year-over-year growth and more than 100 enterprise brands using the platform during 2025.

Suno has continued moving in the same direction lately. After raising more than $400 million, the company launched its v6 generation of music models with industry partners including Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe.

We cannot measure a market-wide "proof threshold" perfectly because companies disclose different metrics. But the largest recent financings are increasingly attached to businesses that can point to something concrete beyond product potential.

Where is creator economy funding actually moving right now?

Creator economy funding is moving heavily toward content-production software, especially AI tools that creators and professional media teams can already use at scale.

Content Production Software recorded 21 deals in both periods. That sounds flat until we look at the rest of the market. Because total deal activity collapsed around it, the category's share rose from 24.1% to 37.5%.

Capital moved much more dramatically, from roughly $244 million to $3.76 billion.

Kling explains a large part of that jump, but removing Kling does not erase the shift. Suno raised two huge rounds, while Higgsfield added an $80 million Series A extension.

Audience Growth Tools also held up unusually well. Deals increased from 10 to 12 and capital more than tripled from roughly $31 million to $104 million.

Creator Platforms and Monetization Tools went the other way.

The rotation is pretty clear now: investors are putting more weight behind tools that create content or turn creator audiences into scalable advertising infrastructure, while several of the older creator-platform models are attracting much less new capital.

Category	Deals now / before	Deal-share change	Capital now / before	Median round now / before
Content Production Software	21 / 21	+13.4 pp	$3.76B / $244M	$6.0M / $3.7M
Audience Growth Tools	12 / 10	+9.9 pp	$104M / $31M	$4.3M / $2.0M
Creator Platforms	7 / 26	-17.4 pp	$36M / $234M	$4.85M / $4.33M
Monetization Tools	7 / 19	-9.3 pp	$90M / $265M	$3.6M / $3.85M
Commerce Infrastructure	4 / 7	-0.9 pp	$115M / $108M	$19.75M / $1.46M
Talent Management	5 / 4	+4.3 pp	$57M / $15M	$3.0M / $1.08M

Are creator platforms and monetization tools losing investor attention?

Creator Platforms and Monetization Tools have lost a lot of funding activity, and the drop is too large to dismiss as normal year-to-year noise.

Creator Platforms fell from 26 financings to seven. Monetization Tools dropped from 19 to seven.

Together, those two categories lost 31 deals. Coincidentally, the entire creator-economy market also lost 31 deals over the same comparison.

That tells us where much of the contraction actually happened.

Creator Platforms still produced some financings, and the median round held up reasonably well. The bigger problem was the disappearance of deal volume.

Monetization Tools lost both activity and capital. Funding dropped from roughly $265 million to $90 million, while the median financing was almost unchanged.

There is no need to declare either business model dead. Investors are simply funding far fewer standalone creator platforms and monetization products than they were one year ago.

Is creator advertising finally becoming a serious software business?

Creator advertising is looking much more like scalable software infrastructure now, which helps explain why funding has held up better than in most creator-economy categories.

Agentio is a useful case study. The company raised $12 million in its Series A and said at the time that its software could turn creator advertising workflows that once took weeks into minutes.

One year later, Agentio raised $40 million at a $340 million valuation after reporting 5x annual growth. The company said more than 100 enterprise brands had used its platform during 2025 and that tens of millions of dollars in paid-media spend had moved through creator campaigns built on Agentio.

Its product now handles creator matching, contracting, brand-safety checks, approvals, measurement, payments and campaign optimization.

A creator campaign managed manually resembles a service business. Software that lets large advertisers repeatedly buy, measure and optimize creator media can scale much more like adtech.

The funding data reflects that shift: Audience Growth Tools was one of the very few areas to increase its number of deals while the wider market contracted.

Is creator commerce getting stronger, or just producing fewer bigger winners?

Creator commerce is producing fewer funded companies but much bigger financings for the winners.

Commerce Infrastructure went from seven deals to four, so the category clearly did not broaden. Yet its median round jumped from roughly $1.5 million to almost $20 million.

ShopMy shows what investors are backing.

The company announced a $77.5 million Series B and later raised another $70 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. ShopMy currently says its platform gives brands access to more than 250,000 tastemakers and focuses heavily on attribution, performance tracking and measurable creator-driven sales.

The category has therefore moved away from lots of small commerce experiments and toward a few platforms with meaningful network scale.

For creator commerce founders, that is a tougher market. For the companies that have already built liquidity between creators, brands and consumers, the available checks can be much larger than they were a year ago.

Are fewer investors driving creator economy funding now?

Fewer investors are showing up in creator economy rounds today, which fits the broader move toward a smaller set of heavily funded companies.

We counted 57 unique disclosed lead investors in the latest 12 months, down from 77.

Repeat lead activity became slightly more common at the same time. Slow Ventures, DGE3 Investment and Volition Capital each appeared twice, and repeat leads represented 10% of disclosed lead-investor participations versus 5.1% previously.

That does not mean 20 investors permanently left the creator economy. A one-year window cannot tell us that.

What we can say confidently is that the active investor pool became narrower during the same period that the company pool narrowed.

Combined with the drop in smaller rounds and the increase in median financing size, today's funding market looks more selective at both ends of the table: fewer startups are clearing the bar, and fewer investors are leading the rounds that do happen.

Are corporate investors moving deeper into creator AI?

Corporate and strategic investors are moving further into creator AI, particularly around content-production companies with direct links to compute, media and distribution.

Strategic investors appeared in 16.1% of current deals compared with 13.8% previously. That increase is fairly modest.

The more interesting change is the type and size of deal they are joining. Median strategic-backed financing rose from about $4.1 million to $16.4 million.

Six of the nine strategically backed rounds in the latest period were in Content Production Software.

Suno's $250 million Series C included NVentures, Nvidia's venture arm, alongside music company Hallwood Media. Beijing Kling's financing brought in companies connected to internet platforms, cloud infrastructure and film and television.

That mix makes sense given where creator technology is going. AI content companies increasingly sit close to GPU infrastructure, cloud providers, music rights holders, film studios and large distribution platforms.

Corporate participation has therefore become more relevant around the creator economy's newest infrastructure layer, even though strategic investors still appear in a minority of deals overall.

Did creator economy funding really shift from North America to Asia?

The apparent shift of creator economy funding from North America to Asia is mostly a Kling effect rather than a broad geographic move.

Asia-Pacific captured 70% of disclosed capital in the latest period, while North America's share fell to 26.8%.

Yet APAC produced only 17.9% of deals.

China makes the distortion obvious. Only two of the 56 current financings involved Chinese companies, while those deals accounted for roughly two-thirds of all capital.

Once Beijing Kling is removed, North America returns to about 82% of disclosed funding. APAC drops to roughly 8.5%.

Europe tells a more interesting story about breadth. European companies completed 17 deals in both periods, but Europe's share increased from 19.5% to 30.4% because activity elsewhere fell.

So Asia currently dominates the dollar chart because of one extraordinary transaction. Europe is the geography that actually gained relative deal presence.

Are creator companies raising again faster and at bigger step-ups?

Creator companies are not obviously returning to investors faster, and the rounds we can compare suggest step-ups remain healthy without accelerating.

Among follow-ons where we could identify an earlier round in our research, the median gap increased from 8.5 months to 12 months. Only 53.8% of the latest observable follow-ons happened within a year, compared with 71.4% previously.

The current sample produced a median round-size step-up of 2.0x. Agentio went from $12 million to $40 million, Fixated was around 3.9x and Passionfroot roughly quadrupled its previous round. Some companies moved the other way, including ShopMy, whose later financing was slightly smaller than its preceding round.

We should put less confidence in this section than in the headline funding analysis. Only 13 current follow-ons and seven previous-period follow-ons had enough visible round history to calculate timing, so the comparison is directional.

For now, the evidence points to solid follow-on expansion rather than faster fundraising cycles.

Are creator startups raising to build products, or to scale businesses now?

The biggest creator economy rounds now look increasingly like scale-up financing: companies are hiring, expanding distribution, deepening professional products and turning early adoption into repeatable revenue.

Higgsfield's financing followed a reported $200 million annual run rate and millions of daily video generations. Agentio said its Series B would help it expand beyond YouTube, deepen its AI infrastructure and grow its team from 35 people to more than 100.

Suno provides an especially current example. The company said its Series D would fund the next stage of its creative platform and its work with the music industry. Since then, Suno has announced partnerships with major music companies and released v6, a new generation of models developed with industry partners.

ShopMy is scaling a different type of infrastructure: measurable creator commerce. Its recent financing came after the company had already built a large creator network and performance-tracking system for brands.

We cannot turn use of funds into clean market-wide percentages because many companies do not disclose them consistently. Still, the deals driving the current funding totals increasingly involve companies financing expansion after product-market validation rather than raising primarily to find it.

What really changed over the last 12 months?

Creator economy funding became much more concentrated. The huge increase in total dollars is genuine, but a tiny number of financings account for most of it. Anyone describing the market simply as a 363% funding boom is missing the main story.

Funding breadth weakened sharply. As pointed out above, deals and funded companies both fell by roughly a third, while the number of active lead investors and represented countries also declined.

The companies that still raise are getting more money. The median financing increased substantially, small rounds became much less common, and later-stage companies captured a larger share of activity.

Existing winners benefited the most. Outside Beijing Kling's unusual restructuring, follow-on financings absorbed the overwhelming majority of disclosed capital.

The category mix changed too. Content-production software and creator-advertising infrastructure currently attract much more attention, while Creator Platforms and Monetization Tools have lost a large amount of deal flow.

Investors also appear to be asking for stronger proof. Several of the largest recent rounds went to companies already showing meaningful revenue, usage, enterprise customers or repeatable commercial infrastructure.

Overall, the creator economy has become more mature but less broad. The strongest companies can raise more money than they could a year ago, while many smaller startups face a much narrower funding market.