Early-stage tech startups in the U.S. are raising more money than their peers did five years ago, despite employing 16% fewer workers, according to research from labor analytics firm Revelio Labs.
One potential reason: More companies are keeping headcounts lean as they adopt artificial intelligence tools to automate more and more administrative tasks.
“Today’s startups seem to promise more with less,” Revelio Labs data scientist Dean Boerner wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “Even as funding rounds continue to grow, teams are leaner than they were just a few years ago, a sign that both founders and investors are prioritizing efficiency — whether driven by AI tools and automation or more disciplined spending.”
Median funding for U.S.-based tech startups’ Series A rounds is $15 million per company in 2025, up 50% since 2020, according to Revelio Labs’ data. Over that same period, the median funding per employee at Series A-stage startups roughly doubled to $320,000, up from $160,000 — because median headcounts at similar-stage startups have dipped 17.5% to 47 employees, down from from 57.
Those figures suggest that early-stage startups could be relying more on AI tools to automate tasks, allowing them to maintain smaller headcounts without sacrificing too much productivity during rapid-growth mode, Boerner noted. Such a trend could be a factor of founders’ growing dependence on AI, investors’ eagerness for startups that use AI to minimize spending or both.
