CB Insights weighs the same venture market differently

The record

CB Insights publishes a fourth widely cited series, separate from PitchBook-NVCA and Crunchbase. Its State of Venture 2024 Report, published 7 January 2025, states that global deal count fell to "27K in 2024 — its lowest annual level since 2016," a 19% year-over-year decline, while fourth-quarter funding reached "$86.2B — a 2-year high, and an increase of 53% quarter-over-quarter." The same report states that AI companies took "37% of venture funding and 17% of deals — both all-time highs" for the year, and that mega-rounds of $100 million or more made up "60% of that quarterly total, or $52B," in the fourth quarter.

What the sources establish

The report establishes that CB Insights' scope is filtered through its own taxonomy: it screens "1,400+ tech markets" it tracks for those with "at least 20 equity deals over the last 2 years" before ranking growth, a coverage rule specific to CB Insights, not a description of the whole market. Its living definitions page, The Complete List Of Unicorn Companies, retrieved 16 September 2026, sets out plain valuation thresholds: "a private company with a valuation over $1 billion" for a unicorn, with decacorn at $10 billion and hectocorn at $100 billion. CB Insights' research hub lists the State of Venture series among its recurring quarterly publications. Together, the pages show CB Insights labelling companies by last-known valuation while labelling market activity by deal count and dollar volume, measurements that should not be swapped for one another.

Scope and revision

The $86.2 billion Q4 2024 figure and PitchBook's or Crunchbase's Q4 2024 figures are not the same number because they are not the same measurement: different deal-inclusion rules, different reporting cutoffs and different estimation methods produce different totals from the same quarter, and CB Insights' report does not reconcile itself to either competitor. The unicorn page's thresholds are static definitions carrying no restatement risk, but the report's quarterly figures are dated to publication and, consistent with how private-market data accumulates, are likely to move as later deals are disclosed on a schedule the report does not state.

The decision in front of you

A reader who needs a concentration measure, not just a total, gets more from the mega-round share here than from the dollar figure alone, since CB Insights states directly that most of the Q4 dollar increase sits in a minority of large deals. Treating that 60% figure as the headline, rather than the $86.2 billion total, is an editorial choice this report's own breakdown supports.

• Is a cited CB Insights figure a deal count, a dollar total, or a valuation threshold?
• Does the quarter's dollar total depend on a small number of mega-rounds, per the report's own breakdown?
• Am I quoting CB Insights' figure for a quarter alongside a different provider's figure for the same quarter as though they were the same measurement?

Three providers measuring the same market from different starting rules is not a contradiction to resolve; it is a reason to keep each provider's figure labelled with its own name.