The 16 most active developer tool investors and VCs going into 2025

Irina Nazarova CEO at Evil Martians

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The current fundraising landscape

We analyzed 1,093 early-stage investments in developer products tools globally in 2024 using data from Crunchbase.com, and here’s what’s interesting: while some well-known dev tools investors have slowed down, there’s still significant capital available. Here’s who’s actively writing checks:

(Let’s note that the data above is incomplete and subject to the specifics of self-categorization and reporting. Please use this analysis as only indicative!)

Who should be on your target list?

Now, a strategic breakdown of who is investing, who might be the best fit for your product, and how to effectively approach and make connections with them.

Y Combinator and its ecosystem

Y Combinator remains the powerhouse in dev tools. YC has backed companies like ubicloud, Wordware and Mintlify—and they’re still actively investing.

It is interesting to also note that being YC-backed opens up some additional funding paths (which are also in top 16):

• Pioneer Fund (450+ YC alumni who invest together)
• Eight Capital (specializes in YC companies)

Pro tip: Even if you don’t get into YC, pay attention to their demo days—it’s a great way to understand the narratives that are currently resonating with investors.

Accelerator alternatives

If YC isn’t your path, there are active alternatives:

• Techstars: strong if you’re outside the Bay Area
• Antler: great for European founders
• Plug and Play: valuable if you’re targeting enterprise customers

The big names are also still active

Sequoia, Accel, Lightspeed, Index, and a16z are all actively investing in dev tools. (The key difference now is that they’re looking for more traction before investing compared to 2021.)

Best shots for quick decisions

These VCs stand out for their rapid decision-making and founder-friendly processes.

• Firestreak Ventures are new, were founded 2022, but are moving fast: first call to term sheet in 2-3 weeks. They’ve backed Anthropic and Hugging Face—so they get deep tech. If you’re working on AI infrastructure or developer productivity, put them high on your list.

• Alumni Ventures are the most active VC in the US right now. The trick is to try and establish a connection via their university networks or portfolio companies.

• Felicis: are nown for quick decisions (first call to term sheet also in 2-3 weeks) and their founder-friendly Founder Development Pledge. Clear bottom-up adoption strategy and early signs of developer love will grab their attention. They often co-invest with technical angels.

• SV Angel evolved from Ron Conway’s personal investing since the 90s. Ron backed Google, PayPal and Stripe early. To connect, seek friendly intros from portfolio founders (Anthropic, Replit, Vercel—look for connections).

What’s working right now

While every investor is unique, patterns have emerged in terms of what’s resonating with technical VCs in the current market.

1. Focus on business metrics first: As we move into 2025, even highly technical investors will want to see user growth and engagement before diving into your architecture.

2. Demonstate execution speed: Show how you’re shipping fast and maintaining a tight feedback loop with users.

3. Be explicit about your market entry strategy: Investors want to see how you’ll get to your first 100 paying customers. Abstract market size matters less than concrete data and, ideally, tested go-to-market plans.

4. Foster technical buzz on X, Hacker News, and so on: Smart technical content is proving to be a powerful fundraising accelerator, so give it a try! Psst… check out our tech marketing & writing service.

Building for two audiences

Let’s close by getting real: fundraising isn’t going to be some natural byproduct of building a great dev tool-it’s hard work! And it’s work that will require your focused attention.

That said, while you’re building, you can also document and amplify your progress in ways that will resonate with both developers and investors. Your technical deep-dives, architecture decisions, and community feedback can all become powerful fundraising material.

So, build deliberately, document thoughtfully, and then, when it’s time to fundraise, you’ll have real substance to show.

Is it just AI? Here’s who’s getting funded

Is it all AI projects getting funded? Let’s take a closer look at the 572 investments in the United States and see what we can find out.

AI-powered and related products accounted for 48% of the deals; in other words, every other deal made last year was an AI deal. The largest deals were for the following:
– Together AI, a cloud-based platform for open-source AI
– DevRev, an AI-based support and product insights platform
– Mechanical Orchard, an AI refactoring and modernization technology for legacy software

While AI may carry some sense of progress and even hope, the second largest group of projects getting funded certainly represents an opposite vibe: fear. More precisely, the industry’s continuously unsolved and unsatisfied yearning for safety. Cybersecurity deals were 39% of the total, with the largest being these:
– Upwind Security, a realtime cloud security solution
– Oasis Security and Aembit, both non-human identity management systems

Bonus points for those who could hit both categories, doing AI-powered security or another mix of the two, which 16% of the deals managed to do, including the largest of them:
– Sublime Security, an AI-powered cloud email security platform
– Blink Ops, an AI-powered security automation platform
– Reality Defender, a deepfake detection platform

This leaves us with the 30% of the deals that are building developer-facing products sans AI or cybersecurity. Here’re the largest of the deals (and let’s provide more examples because this group is the most broad):
– Eon, a cloud backup management platform
– Bridge, a global payments platform built with the use of stablecoins, and already acquired by Stripe (in October 2024)
– Laravel, a cloud platform from the authors of the open-source PHP web application framework
– Databento, a financial markets data API
– Volumez, a cloud volume orchestrator

So, even in the midst of this “AI boom” we can still see a diversity of deals–which makes us feel very enthusiastic about dev tools as a category! Thanks for reading and let’s build better developer products together in 2025 and beyond!