Key Takeaways
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- Global fintech VC funding rose to $55.94B in 2025 (+25% YoY), the first annual increase in four years, but still less than half of 2021’s $123.99B peak.
- Funding concentrated into fewer companies: deal count fell 19% to 3,712, while a handful of platforms captured outsized capital.
- Prediction markets were the biggest winners, with Polymarket + Kalshi raising $3.71B combined, including some of the largest U.S. rounds of the year.
- Regulatory tailwinds and IPO exits re-opened the playbook: a looser environment boosted enterprise adoption and enabled multiple fintech/crypto IPOs, with more expected in 2026.
What Happened?
Fintech venture funding rebounded in 2025, with global startups raising $55.94 billion versus $44.75 billion in 2024, according to PitchBook. The standout category was prediction markets, where Polymarket and Kalshi accounted for $3.71 billion of total funding. Polymarket raised $2 billion in October at a $9 billion valuation and has been exploring additional capital at a higher valuation range, while Kalshi raised $300 million in October and another $1 billion in December, reaching an $11 billion valuation. At the same time, the overall number of fintech deals fell to 3,712, highlighting that capital is flowing into fewer, larger “winners.”
Why It Matters?
The 2025 rebound suggests risk appetite is returning, but the market is behaving differently than 2021: investors are emphasizing scale, category leadership, and clearer commercial traction rather than funding a wide field of early-stage challengers. The dominance of prediction-market mega-rounds shows how quickly capital can concentrate around consumer attention and product engagement themes, even as broader fintech funding remains far below peak levels. Separately, improving enterprise adoption—helped by a more relaxed regulatory climate—supports durable revenue pathways for select platforms, while the IPO re-opening provides liquidity and valuation benchmarks that can pull more private capital off the sidelines.
What’s Next?
Expect investors to keep “doubling down” on perceived leaders across fintech categories, with fewer new entrants receiving meaningful checks unless they show distinctive distribution or regulatory advantage. Watch whether prediction-market platforms can sustain growth without running into regulatory or reputational friction, since that category is now absorbing a disproportionate share of late-stage capital. On the exit side, the 2025 IPO wave (including Circle, Gemini, Chime, Klarna, and Wealthfront) sets up 2026 as a higher-cadence year for fintech listings, which could further revive venture deployment if public-market performance is supportive.
