What’s funding like in the data center market right now?

All funding deals in the data center market 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 data center market report.

Is data center funding actually healthier now?

Data center funding looks healthier underneath the headline today: more companies raised money, deal activity broadened and early-stage financing accelerated, even as total equity capital fell by almost half.

We counted 32 financings over the latest 12 months, up from 28, while the number of funded companies increased from 25 to 28. Every monthly interval contained at least one financing, compared with one empty interval in the previous period. More financings and more funded companies sit behind the dollar drop, and we trace who is getting funded, and by whom, in our report on data centers.

The dollar picture went the other way. Capital fell from $27.06 billion to $13.58 billion, and the median disclosed financing dropped from $500 million to $70.3 million.

The previous year contained several enormous developer, hyperscale and platform transactions. These days, far more activity is happening in Series A, Series B, power infrastructure and cooling companies. The market improved in breadth while becoming much lighter on megadeals.

Metric	Latest 12M	Previous 12M	Change
Deals	32	28	+14.3%
Unique companies	28	25	+12.0%
Total capital	$13.58B	$27.06B	-49.8%
Median disclosed round	$70.3M	$500M	-86.0%
Average disclosed round	$424M	$1.00B	-57.6%
First-financing share	21.9%	21.4%	+0.4 pp
Early-stage deal share	40.6%	17.9%	+22.8 pp
Later-stage deal share	46.9%	60.7%	-13.8 pp
Capital excluding >$50M deals	$307.6M	$90.5M	+239.8%
Capital excluding >$100M deals	$808.1M	$297.6M	+171.5%

Is the 50% drop in data center funding mostly a megadeal effect?

The 49.8% drop in data center funding mostly reflects the disappearance of last year's unusually large platform deals, while funding below the megadeal layer expanded sharply.

The previous period had an extraordinary top end. T5 alone accounted for almost 30% of all capital. T5 and QuadReal described that transaction as an additional $8 billion equity investment to support expansion of their data-center platform, very different in scale from a conventional startup round.

The largest current financing represents about 15% of capital. The top three deals together account for 44.4%, compared with 55.4% previously.

Remove deals above $100 million and current funding reaches $808.1 million, versus $297.6 million in the preceding period. Tighten the threshold to $50 million and funding rises from $90.5 million to $307.6 million. The $20 million to $50 million range also expanded from two transactions to nine.

Outlier test	Latest 12M	Previous 12M	Change
Total capital	$13.58B	$27.06B	-49.8%
Capital excluding >$50M	$307.6M	$90.5M	+239.8%
Capital excluding >$100M	$808.1M	$297.6M	+171.5%
Largest deal / total capital	14.9%	29.6%	-14.7 pp
Top 3 / total capital	44.4%	55.4%	-11.0 pp
>$50M share of deals	56.3%	77.8%	-21.5 pp
>$100M share of deals	37.5%	66.7%	-29.2 pp
Median disclosed round	$70.3M	$500M	-86.0%

Are more data center companies getting funded now?

More data center companies are getting funded now: we counted 28 unique companies and 32 financings, up from 25 companies and 28 financings.

Deal activity also became steadier. Average monthly deal count rose from 2.33 to 2.67, the monthly median increased from 2.5 to three, and no monthly interval went without a financing.

Four companies raised more than once during the current period, compared with three previously. The repeat-fundraising rate consequently moved only slightly, from 12% to 14.3%.

The current market is simply financing more companies across the year, even though the very largest checks are smaller.

Are data center investors backing new startups or mostly existing winners?

Data center investors still put most of their money into companies that have raised before, and the share of first-time financings barely moved.

We found seven first financings in the latest period and six in the previous one. As a share of all deals, that is almost unchanged: 21.9% now versus 21.4% before.

Follow-ons continue to represent roughly 78% of transactions and absorbed $10.40 billion of the current $13.58 billion total.

The median first financing fell from $257.5 million to $50 million, while the median follow-on moved from $500 million to $100 million. New entrants are still getting funded, but existing companies continue to dominate both deal count and dollars.

Why did the typical data center funding round get so much smaller?

The typical data center round shrank because this year has far fewer billion-dollar platform transactions and many more institutional venture rounds in the $20 million to $50 million range.

The median disclosed financing fell 86%, from $500 million to $70.3 million. The average dropped from about $1 billion to $424 million.

Previously, 70.4% of disclosed financings were at least $100 million. Today that figure is 46.9%. Meanwhile, the $20 million to $50 million bracket grew from 7.4% to 28.1% of transactions. Nine-figure rounds shrinking to under half of deals changes the picture, and we watch where the biggest rounds are going in our data center market report.

The smaller median therefore comes with a much thicker middle of the market rather than a broad disappearance of financing.

Has data center funding really moved earlier-stage?

Data center funding has moved much earlier-stage by deal count, with Series A and Series B now accounting for nearly 44% of all financings.

Series A jumped from 7.1% to 25% of deals. Series B climbed from 7.1% to 18.8%, while Seed moved from 10.7% to 15.6%. Growth Equity fell from 46.4% to 21.9%.

Taken together, early-stage financings rose from 17.9% to 40.6% of all deals. Early-stage companies also raised about $604.8 million, compared with only $75.5 million previously.

Early-stage capital still represents only around 4.5% of total current funding because infrastructure-scale checks remain enormous. By company count, however, the shift toward younger venture-stage businesses is clear.

Stage	Latest deal share	Previous deal share	Change
Seed	15.6%	10.7%	+4.9 pp
Series A	25.0%	7.1%	+17.9 pp
Series B	18.8%	7.1%	+11.6 pp
Series C	6.3%	7.1%	-0.9 pp
Growth Equity	21.9%	46.4%	-24.6 pp
Unknown	12.5%	21.4%	-8.9 pp
Early-stage total	40.6%	17.9%	+22.8 pp

Why are power and cooling winning so much data center funding right now?

Power and cooling infrastructure has the clearest momentum in data center funding today, with both deal count and capital more than doubling as AI buildouts run into electricity and thermal limits.

We counted 16 power-and-cooling deals, compared with seven in the previous period. The category now makes up half of all transactions in our dataset, up from 25%, while capital increased from roughly $720 million to $1.58 billion.

The median financing fell from $45.3 million to $26.5 million, which tells us the expansion came from many more funded companies rather than one unusually large deal.

The physical backdrop helps explain why. The IEA's latest work found that global data-center electricity demand grew 17% in 2025 and could roughly double between 2025 and 2030, while transformers, grid connections, generation equipment and planning systems are becoming tighter constraints. Berkeley Lab's latest central estimate has U.S. data centers consuming 11.8% of national electricity by 2030.

Cooling faces the same pressure as AI racks become denser. Accelsius develops two-phase direct-to-chip cooling, DG Matrix works on solid-state power electronics, and Cardinal Data Power is developing behind-the-meter campuses around access to large amounts of electricity.

The category stands apart from the rest of the market. Data-center developers fell from nine deals to seven, colocation providers from five to four, and hyperscale operators from five financings to two. Money is increasingly moving toward the infrastructure that allows more AI compute to be powered and cooled.

Are giant data center developer and operator deals drying up?

Giant developer and operator financings have cooled sharply, although demand for new data-center capacity remains strong.

Data-center developers went from nine deals to seven, while capital dropped from $17.27 billion to $6.22 billion. Their median financing fell from $828 million to $170 million. Developer capital falling from $17.27 billion to $6.22 billion is a large swing, and we look back over the past year in our data centers market report.

Colocation providers moved from five financings and $3.89 billion to four financings and $1.68 billion.

Hyperscale operators were different: deal count fell from five to two, yet those two transactions still raised $3.5 billion. Their current median financing is $1.75 billion, up from $1.3 billion.

We are seeing fewer giant operator transactions at the same time as more capital reaches the companies supplying the power, cooling and enabling infrastructure around those campuses.

Are strategic investors becoming a much bigger force in data center funding?

Strategic investors now play a much larger role in data center funding, especially in Series A/B power and cooling companies.

We identified strategic participation in 14 current deals, compared with two previously. That takes the observed participation rate from 7.1% to 43.8%.

Five of those current strategic-backed deals were Series A financings and three were Series B. Six involved power or cooling companies.

Johnson Controls invested directly in Accelsius, while ABB invested in DG Matrix to commercialize solid-state power technology for AI data centers. Schneider Electric is deploying more than $290 million of power and liquid-cooling infrastructure at TeraWulf's Lake Mariner campus, and Mitsubishi Electric has expanded its European data-center cooling capabilities through acquisitions.

Disclosure coverage is better this year, so the percentage increase should not be read literally as a sixfold jump in corporate interest. Still, the shift is large enough to show that industrial companies are putting much more attention and capital into the same technologies gaining share in our funding data.

Where is data center funding moving geographically?

Europe gained real data center funding breadth, APAC gained check size, and North America kept its deal share while losing most of its megadeal dollars.

North America still produced 17 of the 32 current financings. Its share of transactions barely changed at roughly 53%. Capital, however, dropped from $20.62 billion to $4.91 billion.

Europe went from four deals to seven and from $1.61 billion to $3.01 billion. Both transaction count and capital moved up.

APAC went from seven deals to eight, leaving its deal share at 25%, while capital increased from $4.29 billion to $5.66 billion. CBRE's latest APAC work also found record direct data-center investment in 2025 and increasing pressure to build in markets where power is more readily available.

We found no current-period deal from Africa or Latin America, so the number of represented regions fell from five to three. Funding broadened inside the main hubs rather than spreading more widely around the world.

Geography	Previous deals	Latest deals	Previous capital	Latest capital
North America	15	17	$20.62B	$4.91B
Europe	4	7	$1.61B	$3.01B
Asia-Pacific	7	8	$4.29B	$5.66B
Africa	Present	0	Present	$0
Latin America	Present	0	Present	$0
Represented regions	5	3	-	-
Total deals	28	32	$27.06B	$13.58B

Are younger data center companies getting funded, and has the bar to raise changed?

Younger data center companies are getting more attention, but we cannot show that investors now require more or less commercial proof to write a check.

The median age of a funded company fell from four years to 3.5 years. Power-and-cooling companies have a current median age of three years, while data-center developers sit at one year.

The mean age increased from 6.2 to 6.9 years because mature infrastructure businesses still receive very large checks. Colocation companies have a current median age of 10.5 years and hyperscale operators 6.5 years. Mature operators still taking very large checks make the top companies today worth knowing; we cover who they are in our data center market report.

That creates a barbell between young infrastructure-technology companies and established operators.

We cannot reliably compare the funding bar itself because public announcements do not consistently disclose revenue, customers, signed contracts, pilots, production capacity or technical validation. The stage shift tells us younger companies are raising. It does not tell us exactly how much proof investors now demand.

Are data center companies raising again faster or moving from R&D to scale?

We cannot reliably say that data center companies are raising again faster or shifting from R&D to scaling, because those details are not consistently public across the market.

A few companies returned to market quickly, including Accelsius, TAR, Corintis and EPG. Using those visible examples to calculate market-wide fundraising velocity would bias the result because earlier rounds are not disclosed with the same completeness for every company.

Use of funds has the same problem. Company announcements sometimes specify manufacturing, hiring, deployment, commercialization or geographic expansion, but many provide only broad language.

For now, stage mix and category mix give us a much firmer answer than fundraising velocity or use-of-funds labels.

What's the biggest mistake people make when reading data center funding today?

The biggest mistake today is treating the 49.8% fall in data center funding as evidence that the whole financing market weakened.

The headline lost roughly $13.5 billion, yet more deals and more funded companies appeared underneath it. Early-stage share more than doubled, the $20 million to $50 million segment expanded sharply, and power-and-cooling deals climbed from seven to 16.

As seen above, removing $100 million-plus transactions flips the direction entirely: funding below that threshold rose 171.5%.

The weakness is concentrated at the top of the market. The underlying venture and growth layer is more active than it was a year earlier.

What really changed over the last 12 months?

The biggest change is the gap between headline capital and the market underneath it. Data center funding fell from $27.06 billion to $13.58 billion, while deal count, funded-company count and sub-megaround capital all increased. Anyone looking only at total dollars would get the direction of the underlying venture market wrong.

Just behind that is the move earlier-stage. Series A and Series B went from 14.2% of transactions to 43.8%, and early-stage capital rose from about $75.5 million to $604.8 million. There is now a much bigger layer of young infrastructure companies being financed below the giant operator deals.

Power and cooling produced the strongest category-level expansion. Deals went from seven to 16 and capital from about $720 million to $1.58 billion. Fresh industry evidence makes the direction easy to understand: grid queues are tightening, AI rack density is climbing, liquid cooling is spreading and access to electricity increasingly determines where new data-center capacity can be built. Tight grids and hotter racks open new niches, and we map where the biggest opportunities are in our data center market report.

Strategic capital has also moved closer to the startup layer. Johnson Controls, ABB, Legrand, Schneider Electric and other industrial groups are investing in, partnering with or acquiring technologies around power and thermal management. That fits the much larger share of strategic-backed Series A and B deals we found.

Geographically, the market became more uneven. Europe gained both breadth and dollars, APAC gained mainly through larger checks, and North America remained dominant by deal count while losing much of its previous megadeal capital. Africa and Latin America disappeared from the current 12-month sample.

Overall, today's data center funding market looks broader and more venture-like beneath the infrastructure giants. The market still depends on huge transactions for most of its dollars, but the more interesting change is happening underneath: more companies, more early-stage rounds, a much thicker $20 million to $50 million layer and a rapid shift toward the technologies that determine whether AI infrastructure can actually be powered and cooled.