2025 was the year AI got a vibe check

Money was no object for the AI industry in early 2025. A vibe check crept in the second half of the year.

OpenAI raised $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation. Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machine Labs raised individual $2 billion seed rounds before shipping a single product. Even first-time founders were raising at a scale that once belonged only to Big Tech.