CB Insights has released its annual Smart Money list, spotlighting the world’s 25 best-performing venture capital (VC) investors over the past decade. These firms consistently back breakout startups and achieve more exits than their peers, offering a front-row view of where innovation and capital are headed.

Leading the AI wave

According to the report, these 25 VC investors, which include Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed, are at the forefront of funding artificial intelligence (AI) wave. They backed 52% of new AI unicorns in 2023, 73% in 2024, and 77% in 2025 year-to-date (YTD).

Their focus on AI remains strong, particularly in agentic applications. Over the past 18 months, agent-related categories have led deal activity, with coding agents and copilots securing 28 deals; agent development platforms, 24; enterprise workflow agents and copilots, 20; and legal agents and copilots, 17.

Infrastructure remains active as well, with 17 deals involving large language model (LLM) developers over the same period.

Fintech dominance

These 25 firms are also the most active VCs in the fintech sector. According to CB Insights’ State of Fintech reports for H1 2025, General Catalyst led the space, participating in 19 rounds. It’s followed by Andreessen Horowitz with 16 transactions, and Accel, Founders Fund and Index Ventures, each closing six deals.

Notable transactions include Rippling’s US$450 million Series G (Founders Fund participation); Mercury’s US$300 million Series C (Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia); and Ramp’s US$200 million Series D (Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, and General Catalyst).

Cybersecurity as the next exit hotspot

CB Insights highlights cybersecurity as the likeliest near-term exit opportunity for these VCs’ portfolios. Companies like Tenex.ai, a cybersecurity company leveraging advanced AI and human expertise for enterprise security; Bedrock, which delivers AI-driven data security and management; and Arcjet, a security-as-code platform providing developers with the tools to protect their applications, are among those best positioned for exits.

This trend has already started to accelerate, exemplified by Google’s US$32 billion acquisition of Wiz in March 2025. Wiz is an Israeli-American cloud security company headquartered in New York City.

Outside the US, cybersecurity is also drawing money from these prominent investors. Since January 2024, Accel, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed have been the most active by deal count outside of the US, participating in 84, 64, and 55 deals, respectively. Their portfolios include Ireland’s Tines, an AI orchestration platform for security and IT teams; Israel’s Cato Networks, a network security company; and Torq, another Israeli firm specializing in autonomous security operations.

The 25 best-performing VCs

CB Insights’ Smart Money 2025 list draws on an analysis of more than 12,000 venture firms, evaluating portfolio outcomes, share of rounds led, portfolio quality, capital efficiency, and entry discipline, to identify the 25 highest-achieving VC investors.

An analysis of these firms reveals that they are 6.5 times more likely than the average VC to back to a future unicorn. They also achieve 2.2 times more exits per firm, whether through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or initial public offerings (IPOs).

Since 2015, these VCs have backed 80 companies that exited at US$10 billion+, roughly 100 times the US$100 million median exit. Their largest exits include Uber (US$75.5 billion, 2019), Coinbase (US$65.3 billion, 2021), and Coupang (US$56.6 billion, 2021).

These 25 investors also tend to back the same ventures, with Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz sharing 43 common portfolio companies, General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz sharing 42 companies, and Lightspeed and Sequoia sharing 36 companies.

Among their most widely backed companies are Chainguard, a US-based developer platform for software supply chain security; Figma, a collaborative web application for interface design; and Wiz, each with seven of these top VC firms, including Sequoia, Spark, Redpoint, Lightspeed, Index Ventures, Greylock, and Kleiner Perkins.

Currently, the most promising startups in these VC investors’ portfolios include Zepto, an Indian online grocery delivery app; Bilt, a US-based payments and commerce network that is known for its rent-focused credit offerings; and Glean, a US work AI platform that integrates with all of a company’s data.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Switzerland, based on image by freepik via Freepik