AI Infra Becomes Hottest Seed Round Sector, Far Surpassing Other Fields
Peter Walker (Head of Carta Insights) stated that he has never seen a single sector lead all others so significantly at the seed stage.
AI infrastructure (including numerous neolabs and new foundational model labs) has become the current focal point of venture capital, with many founders concentrating on computing power, development tools, and infrastructure construction.
Top VC capital is highly concentrated in AI Infra seed projects, driving the valuation and financing speed of this sector far beyond traditional software and consumer technology, while non-AI seed projects face significantly increased difficulty in obtaining capital.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Peter Walker has long tracked early financing trends through Carta data and has previously pointed out that the seed rounds of 2025-2026 exhibit a "barbell" distribution, with the top 5% of deals highly concentrated in AI Infra and neolabs, while the median founder financing environment remains relatively flat.
In terms of capital pathways, VCs prioritize early funding for projects that can capture opportunities in computing power, inference optimization, and new foundational models, quickly locking in positions at the infrastructure layer through high valuations, creating a "winner-takes-all" effect in early capital concentration while compressing early liquidity in other sectors.
Similar to the Web3 infrastructure boom in 2021 or the explosion of cloud computing foundational tools in the 2010s, AI Infra is currently in a peak phase of rapid expansion from seed to early stage, with the neolabs model (academic research-type AI labs) becoming the new mainstream organizational form.
Structural judgment: Essentially a concentration of capital. The rapid iteration of AI technology forces capital to reallocate early investments in the infrastructure layer, creating seed round premiums that far exceed other sectors, driven by the capital-intensive nature of computing power and model training, shifting early venture investments from capturing dispersed opportunities to concentrated allocations in a few high-barrier infrastructure platforms.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
When technology converges, infrastructure first concentrates capital.
The hottest seed round sector will determine the industry's ceiling five years from now.
Whoever controls the underlying shape will lock in the pricing power for all subsequent applications.