The evidence sits in The Big Deal’s own numbers. Pre-seed-sized equity - the $100k–$500k first tickets - has been thinning for three years, even as the wider market stabilises. The entrance to the funnel is narrowing at exactly the moment the number of would-be founders swells.

It is tempting to blame AI for soaking up the capital. The data says otherwise. Classifying every startup that raised in H1 2026 by hand - checking each company’s website rather than trusting keyword tags - AI companies of any kind took about 14% of the money, and genuinely AI-native ventures just under 2%. Half of the AI dollars went to fintech - AI used for credit scoring, fraud and payments -, and a quarter to deep tech, mostly at seed and pre-seed, with a single Series A among them (Blnk, in Egypt). On the continent, AI is still a small and mostly applied slice of the market, the mirror image of the global picture, where AI now commands a large share of seed dollars.

And it is highly concentrated: 86% of AI dollars went to the Big 4 - Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya - against about 58% for the market as a whole.

So the problem is not that African startups are broken, or that founders are absent. The pipeline is starved at the entrance. And the retreat of first cheques is nobody’s fault in particular: not the venture funds’, not their LPs’, not the development institutions’, and least of all the founders’. It is the product of a global concentration of capital. With a thinner pipeline and fewer exits, an allocator sensibly concentrates capital in established managers rather than backing first-time or specialised funds, and that logic bites hardest on precisely the emerging managers who would write first cheques.

This is not an African anomaly. The first-cheque squeeze is a worldwide phenomenon: Latin American seed funding fell to a five-year low in 2024, with pre-seed deals down about 77% from their 2022 peak; Southeast Asia’s seed-to-early-stage volume shrank to roughly a third of its 2021–22 level; Indian seed funding fell about a quarter; and even in the United States seed dipped while later stages recovered. And everywhere the money is concentrating into established, serial founders and larger, later rounds: in Latin America, the share of capital going to serial founders jumped from 23% to 42% in two years. Africa fits the pattern; it simply feels it more sharply, because it leans on foreign capital and has almost no domestic institutional base to cushion the swing.

Money alone will not fix it, because the weakness is also at the transitions - i.e. the conversion from seed to Series A - where investor coordination and patient public capital actually count. No single kind of capital can carry this. Commercial LPs are right to prize stability and returns. Development finance answers to a second mandate - building the ecosystem itself - which is exactly why it, not private capital, should hold the entrance open now, taking the largest risks and the first losses. And African institutional capital - pension funds and insurers, the only domestic pool at scale - is the structural answer over the long run, once it is allowed to grow into the role…

For more, read the full analysis, inc. sources & methodology, on my Substack:

Gregoire de Padirac

The Missing First Cheque: Why African Pre-Seed Keeps Shrinking

Why write this now? Because a paradox has nagged at me. AI is making it dramatically cheaper and faster to start a company, and yet the very first rung of African startup financing keeps thinning. I felt the paradox firsthand: when Digital Africa ran an AI Startup Challenge out of Nairobi last May, I braced for a modest response. Instead, we received mo…

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5 minutes ago · 1 like · Gregoire de Padirac

With thanks to Africa: The Big Deal, whose data collection work work makes this kind of analysis possible.

Grégoire.

Moove has joined Africa’s unicorn club. The Nigerian-born, now UAE-headquartered mobility company announced a $250m Series C a few days ago, valuing the company at $2.1b. The round was led by Mubadala, and co-led by Woven Capital and Ion Pacific. The valuation jump is significant, as the last shared valuation was $750m in 2024. That puts it in the top three most valuable African private tech ventures, at least among those with a recently disclosed valuation, behind fintechs Flutterwave ($3.2b) and OPay ($3.1b). It also makes Moove one of the fastest African start-ups to reach unicorn status (launched in 2020, unicorn by 2026), especially in recent years.

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The Series C is the second largest equity round recorded by an African start-up so far in 2026, just behind Spiro’s $270m announced in June. Combined, they represent 44% of all the equity funding raised on the continent in 2026, as of August 10. Before Spiro and Moove, we have to go as far back as December 2024, more than a year and a half ago, to find such a large ticket: with Tyme’s $250m Series D. Moove has now raised around half a billion in equity and $180m+ in debt, nearly $700m in total. Only MNT-Halan (˜$1.2b) and Sun King (˜$900m) have raised more in equity and debt combined.

While African unicorn creation is still rare, Moove’s round shows that when the right mix of growth, global expansion and deep-pocketed strategic capital comes together, the market can still produce very large outcomes. On the back of Spiro’s June raise, it also signals that heavy hitters might look less and less like classic software (or even AI) start-ups and more like capital-intensive infrastructure platforms, as we saw in the energy space before. Infrastructure eats capital…

As always, this analysis is based on our proprietary Africa: The Big Deal database, tracking $100k+ start-up deals across the continent, including both publicly disclosed rounds and deals shared confidentially by selected investors. If you want access to the full database, grab it here with a discount. Ciao! Max

44 start-ups announced funding rounds of $100k or more last month in Africa, raising a combined $102m (exc. exits). That makes July a low-value month, but not a low-activity one. Indeed, from a number of ventures raising perspective, this was almost exactly in line with the previous 12-month average. However, the amount raised was far weaker: at $102m, July came in 60% below the previous 12-month funding average of $258m/month. It was also the lowest monthly total since March 2025.

The real signal is in the funding mix. Out of July’s $102m, only $25m (25%) came through equity rounds. That is the lowest monthly equity total since April 2019. Debt, by contrast, accounted for $75m, or 74% of all funding raised during the month. The largest transactions explain most of it, as they were all debt: M-Kopa’s $30m FMO package, Bridgement’s $20m, BioLite’s $11m, and Nesa Power’s $9m. We also recorded three exits in July - Stakpak and Better Auth’s acquisition by US cloud platform Vercel, and Conservio, acquired by Dutch glampings.com, bringing the 2026 YTD exit count to 28, slightly ahead of the 27 recorded over the same period last year.

Zooming out, from January to July 2026, African start-ups raised $1.46b, below the same period in 2025 ($2b, -27% YoY). Equity funding stands at $921m, also lower than in 2025 (-9% YoY), while debt is at $529m, well below last year’s $941m at the same point (-44% YoY). More importantly, only 241 unique ventures have raised $100k+ so far this year, below Jan-July 2025 (302, -20% YoY), 2024 (286), and 2023 (300). We also listed 256+ unique named active investors this year so far, down from 328 at the same point last year (-22% YoY). In short, so far 2026 records double-digit YoY decline across almost all key indicators...

If you want to go beyond the headline chart and numbers, our database lets you pull the full July deal list, slice it by country, sector, stage and instrument, and benchmark against any month or rolling window since 2019. It also includes an ever-growing set of deals shared confidentially by selected investors, so you’re not just reading what made the news. If you don’t have access yet, grab it here with a discount. Ciao! Max

In the same way that the $1.36b raised by start-ups in Africa in H1 2026 (exc. exits) was heavily focused on a few markets, the sector picture is one of concentration, with two sectors alone - Fintech and Logistics & Transport - capturing 76% of all funding raised.

Fintech ($556m, 41%) remained the largest sector, while Logistics & Transport ($472m, 35%) followed closely, driven by the “Spiro effect” as the EV giant’s $327m raise in H1 alone accounted for 24% of all the funding raised on the continent (and 70% of all L&T funding) last semester. Completing the top 5 are Agri & Food ($93m, 7%), Waste Management ($60m, 4%) and Energy & Water ($50m, 4%).

Given that total numbers tend to be heavily influenced by a few large deals, it is tricky to establish long-term trends at a sector level. That said, at 35% Logistics & Transport (again) is definitely on a high as its share of annual funding never went above 13% (in 2024). By contrast, Energy’s 4% share represents a serious underperformance compared with previous years (between 20% and 27% in 2023-2025).

As most Logistics & Transport funding (starting with Spiro) was EV-related, and given the good performance of Climate Tech-related sectors like Waste Management for instance, the share of funding going to Climate Tech ventures - a category that straddles multiple sectors - reached 39% in H1 2026. This is higher than in 2024 (34%) and on par with 2025 (38%).

Now if we rank sectors by start-up count instead of funding raised, the story is much more balanced. Fintech (48, 25%) still had the largest number of funded ventures raising funding during the semester, but the second spot was hotly contested by three sectors with almost the same number of ventures each: HealthTech (29), Logistics & Transport (27), and Agri & Food (26). On the positive side, it means that the ecosystem has more breadth than the funding view might imply; however, it also reveals how hard it is to raise larger tickets in some sectors.

As far as Climate Tech is concerned, its share of the total number of start-ups raising funding in H1 2026 (30%) is lower than its share of funding raised (39%), but this is on trend with previous periods (28% in 2024 and 29% in 2025).

Voilà, that’s it for today. I’m sure you know this by now, but all the analysis is based on our proprietary database, tracking start-up deals across the continent since 2019. You can access the database here, and newsletter readers continue to get a discount using the usual code. See you next week for a quick look at July (Yes, another month is almost over…). Cheers! Max

Last week, we looked at high-level H1 2026 numbers, including how much was raised, deal volume, equity vs. debt, exits… This week, let’s focus on the markets where most of the money was raised and deals happened:

Egypt is the country that attracted most funding in H1 with a total of $327m, followed by Nigeria ($254m), Kenya ($126m) and South Africa ($83m). Benin-born Spiro* alone raised as much as all Egyptian ventures ($270m equity + $57m debt); given their heavy operations in Kenya, it puts Kenya’s decline in perspective a bit. The Big Four attracted ‘only’ 58% of the funding, though there is a Spiro effect here of course. If we focus purely on equity, Nigeria actually came on top ($214m) with Egypt second ($183m), and the other two some distance behind ($66m in South Africa, $46m in Kenya). Beyond the Big Four, three markets attracted more than $25m in total funding in H1: Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, and Morocco.

We also find Morocco on the list of ecosystems with at least 10 start-ups raising $100k+ in H1 along with Tanzania, and Ghana (which underperformed in terms of funding raised, placing only #11). Zooming back on the Big Four (110 out of 190 $100k+ deals i.e. 58%), Nigeria is head and shoulders above its peers, with Egypt and Kenya almost tying, and South Africa in fourth position again. If you compare with what the two maps above looked like a year ago (I kept the same scale and design), you’ll see quite a bit of continuity, but also some dramatic changes (inc. on funding raised in Senegal and South Africa, or on number of ventures funded in Egypt and South Africa):

If we spend a little more time on the dynamics at the top, first from a total funding raised perspective**, we see that both Egypt and Nigeria have been quite consistent in the past four periods. At 27%, Egypt’s share of the total funding raised on the continent in H1 was at its highest since we started tracking. Nigeria‘s amount has been remarkably stable since as far back as H2 2022, though it surpassed the $250m mark for the first time since 2022. On the opposite side of the spectrum, after a pretty impressive H2 2025 Kenya fell to its lowest level since early 2021. South Africa, which was topping the charts a year ago, did not reach $100m in funding in H1.

Finally, if we focus on the number of ventures raising at least $100k (exc. grants) during the period, Nigeria is back on top after an underwhelming H2 2025. The drops we’re seeing in the rest of the Big Four - both HoH and YoY - echo the concerns we have been raising repeatedly since the beginning of the year about the concentration of the money on larger deals and the lack of early-stage tickets, especially at the lower end of the range…

As you know, a full and detailed breakdown of deals for all countries is available in our comprehensive deal database. If you don’t mind a discount, be sure to subscribe via this link. Bonne semaine! Max

*While Spiro ceased to be Benin-focused around 2022-2023, moving its HQ to Nairobi while the holding is in Dubai, we had continued to ‘tag’ them as Benin in our database to recognise their roots. To reflect the pan-African nature of their operations, we will tag them as ‘Africa’ moving forward.

**If you prefer to look at the share rather than the amount, try this graph:

On Tuesday, we published the first post in our H1 2026 series, focused on how the very strong June performance made up for an otherwise underwhelming start of the year. Today, we’ll start diving into the H1 numbers themselves: total raised, number of ventures, equity vs. debt, exits etc. Let’s go:

On the total funding raised, with $1.36 billion announced, H1 2026 is roughly on par with H1 2025 ($1.44b, -6% YoY), but below H2 2025 levels ($1.7b, -22% YoY). The rebound observed in the second half of 2025 doesn’t seem to have endured.

Equity funding reached $900m. While it has been eroding slightly over the past three periods ($1b in H2 2024, $962m in H1 2025 & $979m in H2 2025), we should note the relative stability, especially compared to the previous dip in late 2023-early 2024.

Debt funding had mixed results in H1 2026 though: while it remains on par with H1 2025 numbers ($450m, +1% YoY), it marks the end of three consecutive periods of HoH growth. The result is a 66%:33% equity:debt split (vs. 56%:42% in H2 2025) more titled towards equity.

Meanwhile, one indicator is a cause for concern: the number of ventures raising $100k+ during the period. At 190 start-ups, this is the lowest tally since at least 2021 (when we lowered our tracking threshold to $100k). And the category that suffered the most are start-ups raising between $100k and $1m, down from 179 in H2 2025 to 100 in H1 2026 (-44% HoH). We have covered this issue repeatedly in the past few months (see here and here): the underinvestment in early stages will eventually create a pipeline issue unless it gets corrected swiftly.

Let’s end on a high note though: with 25 exits, H1 2026 was a very good semester. Those included Mono’s acquisition by Flutterwave in Nigeria ($25m-$40m) and Araxi’s acquisition of Pay@ for $62m in South Africa. The ecosystem could well be on track to beat its 2025 record (48). This is an important signal to convince investors of both the potential and liquidity of the African ecosystem.

We’ll stop here for today but will return soon with the geographic breakdown. As usual, this week’s analysis data comes from our proprietary Africa: The Big Deal database where we have been tracking start-up investment activity on the continent since 2019. The full dataset is available for a modest $19 a month via this discount link. Your support in sharing our work with your network - whether the database or this free newsletter - is greatly appreciated. Bonne journée! Max

H1 is over. Long live H1 2026! Start-ups in Africa have raised close to $1.4 billion in funding in the first half of the year, pretty much on par with H1 2025. The total was split 2/3-1/3 between equity and debt. 190 ventures raised $100k+ during the period, and 264+ investors were involved in at least one deal…

In the coming days and weeks, we will be diving deeper into these numbers, with our customary graphs and analyses. But first of all, we thought it was worth commenting on the June 2026 performance, which has certainly shaped H1’s overall trend. Indeed, at the end of May 2026, the numbers weren’t too encouraging. With ‘only’ $843m in the bag, the year to date total was tracking well below 2025: -21% YoY; and even -48% YoY for equity. Only February ($273m) had seen funding barely above the 2025 monthly average ($264m). And then June happened…

48 ventures raised $515m in June, way above what we had seen for a while. In fact, this was the best monthly tally since July 2025, and the second-best since early 2023. Most notably, 91% of the funding was raised as equity, after the equity-debt split had been roughly 50-50 until May. The $468m raised in equity were more than had been raised in the previous 5 months; it was nearly 3x times the average of the previous 12 months ($169m); and simply the best equity month since as far back as March 2022. There was undoubtedly a Spiro effect, as the venture announced a staggering $270m in funding in June, taking its total raised this year so far to $327m. No start-up had raised this much in a half-year since MNT-Halan in H1 2023 ($400m). Flutterwave also secured an estimated $100m Series E (a flat round, but as they say, ‘Flat is the new Up’) and MNT-Halan $50m. As a result, and despite a worrying start of the year, H1 2026 finished almost on par with H1 2025 for both total (-6% YoY) and equity funding (-7% YoY).

If this post has left you wanting more, you can explore the full dataset - over $21b worth of tracked funding and exit activity - by subscribing to our database. As always, we’ve arranged a discount for newsletter subscribers. And don’t worry, we’re far from done. Over the coming days and weeks, we’ll be digging deeper into the numbers: equity versus debt, sector trends, geographic split, gender lens, how Africa compares with the rest of the world, and plenty more. Thanks for reading, and see you again soon. Max

While they matter less than product-market-fit, unit economics, or go-to-market strategy, a start-up’s name and brand identity remain very important assets. Especially if you believe they might influence - directly or indirectly - its ability to raise funding. So as we wait for the H1 numbers, we thought we’d do something a bit lighter and have a look at our database in search for the optimal way to name your future African unicorn…

• The first letter. Since 2019, the most “successful” first letter in terms of funding raised is M (as in MNT-Halan, M-Kopa, Moove or Moniepoint*). The M-starters have claimed almost 1 in 6 dollars raised on the continent ($3.2b) during the period. As a reminder, there are 26 letters in the alphabet ;). The runner-up is S (as in Spiro, Swvl or Sun King) with 1 in 8 dollars, followed by T, C, O, and A. In terms of number of ventures raising, it’s S, A and C that make the top 3, with M coming fourth. If you want to avoid underperforming first letters, we’d recommend staying away from X or Q as those only attracted less than 1 in $1,500 and $700 raised respectively.

• The length. Once you have a first letter, how many do you add? Well, 69% of the funding that has been raised on the continent over the period went to start-ups with a name between 4 and 8 characters, from Opay to Andela to TymeBank. Any shorter than that and you fall off the radar as less than 1% of funding has gone to ventures with a name 3 letters or less. Beyond 8 characters, it is pretty much a bell curve though 11-letter names performed abnormally well, driven by Interswitch, Flutterwave or Chipper Cash in particular.

• The letters inside. And then to fill in the rest, you’ll need 2 core ingredients:

  • Vowels. A is a must, as it appears in the name of start-ups who attracted two thirds of the money since 2019. Then come E (47%), O (43%) and I (41%). U is far less represented (22%), and so is Y (19%). And yes, I’m team Y-is-a-vowel.

  • Consonants. There is more choice there of course, but you’d be inspired to pick at least an N (42%), and some of those: T (39%), L (37%), R (34%) or M (33%). And you can probably pass on Z, X, J and Q (all less than 4%).

  • The other stuff. If you feel quirky and want to throw in a number or a special character, I would stick with an hyphen as in MNT-Halan or a dot as in d.light, that show up in the names of start-ups responsible for 9% and 4% of the funding raised respectively. Numbers won’t get you very far though (unless you’re Planet42 maybe).

Now if we throw all of this in our Scrabble tiles bag and try and combine the elements above (i.e. start with an M + pick 3 each of the most represented vowels and consonants + limit ourselves to 8 letters max), my money is on either melt.ai or mental.ai. They tick all our boxes, and steal the game with a snazzy “.ai” ending. That’s it. I’ve done the hard part. Now up to you to define what the business does, and to build it. Except the domain names seem to be taken, so someone might already be on it…

*But remember, while a later-stage rebranding exercise can be expensive and tricky, a name change is always in the cards, and if your business is successful, the market - and the money - will follow you, whether you’re a TeamApt or a Moniepoint ;)

As always, the underlying data is pulled from our Africa: The Big Deal database which includes 4,200+ deals since 2019 worth over $20 billion, and and additional 220+ exits. If you want to stress-test your own “naming theory”, or do more serious analysis (by sector, geography, founding year or number of founders for instance), the extensive raw data allows you to do just that. And if you use this link, you even get a discount. A bientôt, Max

37 start-ups in Africa announced a total of $135m in funding through $100k+ deals (equity, debt, grants; excl. exits) in May 2026. Deal activity improved again after April (32) and the March low (22), but remains below the previous 12-month average (45 deals/month). From a total funding raised perspective, May was better than April ($110m) but lower than March ($150m), and significantly below the previous 12-month average ($255m/month).

The more structural signal sits again in the instrument mix. May was almost perfectly balanced between equity ($65m) and debt ($68) (with an extra $2m in grants). And that balance is not just a May quirk: it’s broadly what the market looks like now, a marked shift from 12–18 months ago, when the ecosystem was much more equity-led, with an equity share over 70%. In terms of how many ventures raised by instrument, equity continues to lead: 22 ventures raised equity, 7 raised debt, and 8 raised (small) grants. Zooming out, the year-to-date picture reinforces that same story. 2026 YTD (Jan–May) now stands at $843m across 160 $100k+ deals, split almost evenly between equity and debt. In other words: deal flow is recovering off March’s trough, but the market’s “engine” remains the same, with debt doing a lot of the work to keep totals afloat.

May’s headline total was also heavily shaped by four transactions: Nala’s $50m credit facility, LemFi’s $30m Series B extension, Africa GreenCo’s $10m raise, and Bfree’s $10m round add up to $100m, i.e. roughly three quarters of the $135m announced in May. We also recorded six exits in May (not counted in the totals). One deserves a specific mention: Ghana-born insure tech pioneer Bima - whose corporate footprint has long since expanded globally - is being acquired for $119m. That’s a meaningful reminder that, even in a month where primary funding totals remain muted, liquidity events are still happening in the background, and sometimes at non-trivial sizes.

While the sample is small, we can note that geographically, West Africa and East Africa attracted ~85% of the total amount raised in May (Nigeria alone accounted for ~64% of all equity raised across the continent), though the picture is more balanced when you look at deal count, not just amount. Sector-wise, fintech once again did the heavy lifting on amount raised driven by both the Nala and LemFi tickets. The signal is familiar: a reasonably diverse set of ventures getting funded, but a disproportionate share of the amount raised still hinging on a handful of larger transactions.

Net-net, May looks consistent with the emerging 2026 “new normal”: 30–40 deals/month, $100m–$200m/month, and a funding mix where debt plays an outsized stabilising role. That profile is notably softer than 2025, when the market’s run-rate was closer to ~50 deals/month and ~$300m/month across the year, and the mix materially more equity-led. But the June 1st Spiro announcement - and hopefully more of the like - might help prop up the H1 numbers. We’ll know that in month’s time…

If you want to go beyond the headline chart and numbers, our database lets you pull the full May deal list (and the underlying sources), slice it by country/region, sector, stage and instrument, and benchmark against any month or rolling window since 2019. It also includes an ever-growing set of deals shared confidentially by selected investors, so you’re not just reading what made the news. If you don’t have access yet, grab it here with a discount. Ciao! Max

Today, we’re happy to announce our first cohort of 100+ start-ups!

As we hoped, they are a very diverse group that reflects the range of ventures currently building in Africa. They originate from 20+ countries, with Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa coming out on top, and include representatives from each of the continent’s five sub-regions. They cover a broad range of sectors, with the two most represented being agriculture and fintech (20% each), followed by Deeptech/AI. (The most common keywords in their one-sentence descriptions of their businesses are “AI”, “platform”, and “climate”). Women founders and CEOs showed up en masse at the application stage, and are well represented in the cohort: 53% of start-ups have at least one woman co-founder, and 21% have a woman CEO. While this is still far from parity, this is higher than what we observe in the market (27% and 15% respectively, if we compare with start-ups who raised funding in 2025).

92% have already raised some funding. Two thirds have secured between $10k and $250k to date, and should be gearing up for their pre-seed or seed round shortly. In fact, 70% are now targeting a round between $100k and $1m. And they’ve all either already started fundraising for their next round (46%), or will do so in the coming weeks or months. Investors, Take note!

To give you a flavour of who is in this cohort, members include: Aetos Dairy, Afripesa, agriBORA, Agrify, AquaMnara, Bfarm-Tech, BioPartners Life Sciences, Blue Lab, Blutechnova, Bosso Africa, BraceMoni, C STAR, Cardri Finance, Career Plug AI, Dawa Mkononi, Digifarmer AI, Everlend Agritech, FarmXic, FieldWatch Technology, FigX, FinFex, Flexpay Technologies, FriendnPal, Green Voyage, Huntrecht, Hydropool, Khwezi Innovations, Konnekt Digital Networks, La Dame qui Range, LocaleNLP, Loop, Myitura, NoMa SRS, Rafode, Renewables Vault, Solar Taxi, TaxStreem, Ubuntu Alliance, Urban Greens, Vioo, Waribei, Yelen, and more!

What’s next for them? The cohort members will now:

• Gain free access to our comprehensive deals database for a total of two years (worth almost $500). Updated every month, the data already includes nearly 4,500 deals worth $20b+ and captures all transactions over $100k, from equity to debt, grants, and exits.

• Learn how to design and implement a data-driven fundraising strategy. Through a series of quarterly webinars, the team will guide them in leveraging the database to generate critical market insights, benchmark competitors, and prioritise investor outreach.

• Gain visibility with investors, clients, and potential partners as we promote the initiative, and share testimonials of the most successful fundraisers throughout the programme.

We thank FMO Ventures once again for their partnership, and we now look forward to supporting the cohort members on their fundraising journey.

Max & Maxime, from Africa: The Big Deal

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NB - If, like FMO Ventures, your organisation is committed not only to investing in the start-up ecosystem in Africa, but to helping it grow and mature, and if you would like to explore a similar partnership, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

In the first four months of 2026, we recorded 162 unique investors participating in at least one non-exit $100k+ deal on the continent. This is the lowest Jan–Apr count we’ve seen since we started tracking comparable data in 2021. (While we can’t capture every single investor’s involvement, particularly where checks are smaller or disclosure limited, our methodology has been unchanged since 2021, allowing for comparability). Since the 2022 spike (556), participation stabilised in 2024 (222) and 2025 (220), but now seems to be contracting significantly in 2026 (-26% YoY). This drop in investor participation is tightly linked to the shape of the market with Jan–Apr 2026 recording only 124 deals (exc. exits), significantly down versus recent Jan–Apr windows.

Even in this context, some investors have continued to ‘show up’ in the first four months of 2026. A few names have appeared repeatedly, helping keep momentum, including DEG who announced 11 new grants via their developpp programme (in EVMAK, Rada 360, Sumet Technologies etc.) and Azur Innovation Fund who was involved in four new equity investments in Morocco (Enakl, Weego, Goswap & ZSystems). Beyond these, we find a layer of familiar names, active participants in the ecosystem who continue to anchor early-stage and growth syndicates, including IFC, Enza Capital, Norrsken 22, Global Innovation Fund, Digital Africa, Launch Africa, Partech and Madica who were active in at least three $100k+ deals each, and an extra 20 investors who participated in two $100k+ deals, and potentially more*. While the overall set of active participants is smaller in 2026 so far, the market still benefits from a core of repeat actors that can provide continuity.

Geographically, the investor base is broadly stable, with two notable shifts. Among investors with known HQ active on the continent in Jan–Apr 2026, Africa leads with 36% (56), followed by the US (25%), Europe (19%), APAC (13%), and the Middle East (6%). This is largely aligned with the post-2022 pattern, except Europe’s representation is lower (19% vs ~26% average across Jan–Apr 2023–2025) and APAC’s higher (13% vs ~6%). APAC’s uplift is primarily a Japan story: 12 of the 20 APAC investors active in Jan–Apr 2026 were Japan-based, boosted by Japanese participation in the Dodai and Sora Technology deals (each with five Japanese investors listed). Within Europe, it seems that so far the UK and Germany might be holding up better than France and the Netherlands in terms of the origin of investors involved in at least one deal, but it is frankly too early to call as the samples are very small.

As always, this week’s data is coming from our proprietary Africa: The Big Deal database through which we have been tracking start-up investment activity on the continent since 2019. The full dataset can be accessed for a modest $18 a month if you use this discount link. Your support in sharing our work with your network - either the database or this free newsletter - continue to be much appreciated. Bonne journée! Max

*There can be a delay in how deals are reported, as we capture data from both public sources, and confidential disclosure from investors. If you’re an investor on the continent and think we might be missing some of the deals you have been involved in, please reach out to us.

In April 2026, 32 start-ups in Africa announced a total of $110m in funding through $100k+ deals (equity, debt, grants; exc. exits). From a deal activity point of view, that’s a welcome bounce from a very slow March (22), yet still very much below the previous 12-month average of 46 deals/month. As far as total amount is concerned, April’s $110m is the lowest monthly tally since March 2025 ($52m), and well below the previous 12-month average of $275m/month.

That said, we know month-to-month moves are unfairly volatile metrics. And if we focus on the 12-month rolling picture, the total raised still fits neatly within the band we’ve been tracking for a few months now: $3.1b (±$90m) since August 2025. Indeed, in the 12 months to April 2026 (May 2025–Apr 2026), start-ups in Africa raised $3.1b (exc. exits), including $1.7b in equity and $1.4b in debt (plus $30m in grants). The rolling total amount is still holding up, propped up by debt performance.

If April’s total amount was lower than March’s overall, it was higher on equity: $74m came as equity and $36m as debt, while March had been overwhelmingly debt-led ($55m equity, $96m debt). As usual, a handful of deals concentrated a large share of the month’s total: Egyptian fintech Lucky raised a $23m Series B, while Gozem ($15.2m debt) and Victory Farms ($15m debt) did most of the heavy lifting on the debt side. Ethiopia-based electric mobility start-ups Dodai announced $13m ($8m Series A + $5m debt). April also saw two exits: Nigeria’s Bread Africa was acquired by SMC DAO as consolidation continues in the country’s digital asset sector, and Egypt’s waste recycling start-up Cyclex was acquired by Saudi-Egyptian investment firm Edafa Venture.

With April in the books, 2026 YTD (Jan–Apr) comes in at $708m across 124 $100k+ deals (exc. exits), split almost evenly between equity ($364m) and debt ($340m). That’s a pretty different profile from Jan–Apr 2025 for instance, when start-ups had raised more ($813m, -13% YoY) across far more deals (180, -31% YoY), and with much more equity-led mix ($652m equity vs $138m debt, 80%/20%). So far this year we’re seeing the same underlying pattern: fewer ventures raising, and a greater reliance on debt to keep totals afloat…

If you want to go beyond the headline chart and numbers, our database lets you pull the full April deal list (and the underlying sources), slice it by country/region, sector, stage and instrument, and benchmark against any month or rolling window since 2019. It also includes an ever growing set of deals shared confidentially by selected investors (so you’re not just reading what made the press). If you don’t have access yet, grab it here with a discount. Bom dia! Max

I initially resisted the urge to write a Q1 2026 post because I would have defaulted to a long-form analysis that risked missing the point. After some mulling over, I have decided to produce a simple table comparing Q1 2026 to Q1 2025, and to summarise briefly how it illustrates a few ongoing shifts in the ecosystem:

• While the total funding raised (exc. exits) seems healthy overall (+27% YoY), the growth is exclusively due to a debt boom (6x) that compensates the decline in equity raised (-27%).

• While overall funding grew YoY, the number of deals suffered a sharp decline (-34%) driven in particular by a scarcity of smaller deals: the number of $100k-$500k deals was halved over the period (73>32, 44>18 if we focus exclusively on equity deals). Meanwhile, both the number of $10m+ deals (14>18) and their share of total funding raised grew (63%>82%). In this context, the median deal size more than doubled.

• On the positive side, there were twice as many exits in Q1 2026 compared to the previous year (12 vs. 6).

• Climate Tech investments have also grown over the period ($124m/$184m), despite a drop in funding going to the Energy sector ($84m>$34m), which has historically driven the Climate Tech numbers up. Its share grew from 26% to 31% YoY. Overall, fintech continues to hold the #1 spot.

• Frustratingly, the funding dynamics in disfavour of smaller deals meant that women missed out on investments. 20 deals involved a startup with a woman CEO and/or at least a woman co-founder in Q1 2026, compared to 46 in Q1 2025. They also raised less than half the amount they had raised a year ago ($111m>$49m), meaning their share of total funding fell sharply (24%>8%).

• Not on the table are things that are pretty much BaU. For instance geographically, the number of countries with at least one $100k+ deal over the period is stable (19), and the share of the Big Four is fairly comparable in terms of total raised (82%>72%) and number of deals (61%>54%), though it is decreasing.

We’ll leave it there for today. But many of you have access to the full underlying data through your database subscription, so you can explore other cuts and metrics. If you’re not yet a subscriber and want to join in, you can do so for under $20/month using this link. As always, if you spot something interesting, send it our way. Bye for now, Max

I know we keep coming back to this topic, but it is because it’s the one that determines the ecosystem’s future outcomes. On the surface, start-up funding in Africa is doing pretty well: in the 12 months to March 2026 (Apr 2025–Mar 2026), start-ups in Africa raised $3.3b (exc. exits), including $1.8b in equity and $1.4b in debt, still very much within the pattern we described recently (if anything, towards the top end). But it is increasingly a top-of-the-market story.

Indeed, the long tail is a cause for concern: fewer small equity deals are being signed, and those are the deals that create the next cohort of companies that can raise larger rounds later. It’s not a crash, but a continued erosion. One simple proxy is the share of equity deals that are “small” in the total number of equity rounds announced. In 2021, 40% of disclosed equity deals were in the $100k-$250k range, and 53% in the $100k-$500k range. By 2025, those shares had fallen to 29% and 45% respectively. And while 2026 YTD is still a small sample, the numbers are quite dramatic with only 21% of equity deals in the $100k-$250k range and 31% $100k-$500k. Over the past 12 months, only 129 ventures raised $100k–$500k in equity. A year earlier, it was 148. Under this definition, 129 is the lowest rolling count since we started tracking this metric in 2021.

This reality hides in plain sight because small deals barely move the headline numbers. While making up 45% of the equity deal count in 2025 (164 of 363), $100k-$500k deals represented only ~2% of equity funding ($40m out of $1.9b). So you can lose a lot of early-stage activity while totals stay unaffected, especially if a handful of larger equity rounds (and more debt) keep coming through.

Two important nuances though. First, this is not uniquely African. It maps to what is being observed globally: more money (much more money in the case of AI and the US specifically) concentrated into fewer companies, with deal counts looking down. Second, grants are still doing the work. While they’re sometimes looked down on as an ‘instrument’, they are particularly important when the market isn’t taking the early-stage risk. In our database, 2025 has the largest number of annual $100k+ grants we’ve tracked since 2021 (160 disclosed grants to 154 ventures). However, 2026 so far is running far below last year’s pace: in Q1 2026, we tracked only 15 disclosed $100k+ grants totalling about $4m (versus 27 deals and ~$20m in Q1 2025). If grants are meant to help de-risk innovation and keep the early-stage engine running, those Q1 numbers should worry us a bit.

So, Yes: totals are holding up. But the ecosystem’s future is written in the base. And right now, the base is thinning, in small equity cheques, and (so far this year) in grants too. If this trend continues, Africa might still be producing big rounds in 2026, while silently starving the pipeline that produces the next generation of breakout companies…

If you want to read more on the topic, Gregoire de Padirac’s guest post is a must. All the numbers above are computed from our database. If you want to be able to pull out the underlying time series behind the $100k-$250k and $100k-$500k deal shares, the rolling count, or the grant Q1 comparison, the raw data in a simple Excel format lets you do just that. And more. And sorry to those of you who might have rolled your eyes when you saw we were covering this topic again this week, but this is too important a topic to be ignored. Best, Max

In March 2026, 22 start-ups in Africa announced a total of $151m in funding through $100k+ deals (equity, debt, grants; exc. exits). From an amount perspective, while this is nearly three times what was raised a year ago in March 2025, it’s still well below the monthly average of $266m we’ve observed over the past 12 months (that average is itself made up of serious highs ($554m in July 2025) and lows ($52m in March 2025)). That said, we know month-to-month moves are an unfairly volatile metric. And if we focus on the 12-month rolling picture, it still fits neatly with the pattern we studied in a recent post: in the 12 months to March 2026 (Apr 2025–Mar 2026), start-ups in Africa raised $3.3b (exc. exits), including $1.8b in equity and $1.4b in debt. If anything, these numbers sit towards the top end of the band.

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March was overwhelmingly a debt month: of the $151m raised, $55m was equity and $96m was debt, meaning nearly two thirds of the month’s total came as debt. As usual, a handful of deals concentrated quite a bit of the funding. Sistema.bio led the month with $53m in debt, MNT-Halan followed with another bond issuance worth $40m+ this time, and Zeno rounded out the top three with a $25m Series A. Exits were also busy in the background: we recorded five of them in March (all values undisclosed), with the most talked-about being Orda’s acquisition by Moniepoint.

With March in the books, Q1 2026 (Jan–Mar) comes in a couple millions short of the $600m mark, split almost evenly between equity ($291m) and debt ($304m), across 83 ventures. That’s a very different shape from Q1 2025, when start-ups had raised less ($469m), but the mix was far more equity-led ($397m vs $52m debt, i.e. 89% equity), and 130 ventures had contributed to the total.

There are clearly fewer start-ups raising this year so far, and this is part of an almost uninterrupted downward trend since the heatwave. We’ll come back to this in a future post, but the venture count is the immediate cause for concern: 22 start-ups raised in March, and this is the lowest monthly count we’ve seen since we started tracking $100k+ deals in 2021. In particular, only 130 ventures raised between $100k and $500k in equity in the past 12 months, and this is again the lowest that rolling count has been since at least 2021. Despite the funding winter, a year ago that number was 150+. So while the total amount raised is holding up at a decent level, it increasingly relies on a few larger (debt) tickets, once again raising questions about future prospects if early-stage ventures remain underfunded…

If you want to go beyond the headline chart and numbers, our database lets you pull the full March deal list (and the underlying sources), slice it by country/region, sector, stage and instrument, and benchmark against any month or rolling window since 2019. It also includes an ever growing set of deals shared confidentially by selected investors (so you’re not just reading what made the press). If you don’t have access yet, grab it here with a discount. Ciao! Max

🚨 The March 27 deadline to apply for our Data for Founders initiative is fast approaching. Fill in the questionnaire before it’s too late! 🚨

Since the heatwave in particular, debt has emerged as a core feature of the start-up funding landscape in Africa. Debt has its own merits and it would be wrong to somehow oppose it to equity. This is not a competition, but a partnership. Debt and equity investors - and those do both - play very different yet equally important roles in a maturing start-up ecosystem. This week, we dig deeper into our database to see what key trends we could identify on the debt front…

1️⃣. Debt is now a material part of the funding story. Announced debt grew from less than $300m in 2021 to $1.2b in 2025. Over the same period, debt’s share of total disclosed start-up funding (exc. grants & exits) rose from 7% to 38%, making it a meaningful part of the market rather than a niche side-note.

2️⃣. But debt still reaches relatively few ventures. Between 2021 and 2025, 169 start-ups announced a debt round, versus 1,880 that announced equity funding: roughly a 1 to 11 ratio over the period. That gap has narrowed, though: in 2025, the ratio was closer to 1 to 7, with 53 start-ups announcing debt against 363 announcing equity (13%).

3️⃣. Most debt is announced on its own, not alongside equity. In 2025, 87% of debt-raising start-ups announced just debt, as opposed to debt tied up to an equity round. That is up from 75% in 2022-2023, suggesting debt is increasingly being used as a standalone financing tool rather than an add-on to an equity raise.

​​​4️⃣. The typical debt round tends to get bigger. The median disclosed debt round was $2m in 2021, $5.5m in 2022, $3.6m in 2023, $2.1m in 2024, and $5m in 2025. So while the market has clearly matured, it has not done so smoothly: progress has come in jumps, setbacks, and rebounds.

​5️⃣. A handful of mega-deals still define each year. In every year from 2021 to 2025, the single largest debt round represented between 18% and 26% of all disclosed debt raised that year. For instance in 2025, d.light’s $300m facility alone accounted for roughly a quarter of all announced debt, which helps explain why annual totals and medians can swing quite sharply.

6️⃣. Debt is much more concentrated than equity. Since 2019, the top 10 debt raisers (d.light, MNT-Halan, Sun King, M-Kopa, Wave, Moove, Spiro, valU, Planet42 & Burn) have accounted for roughly 66% of all disclosed debt raised, versus just under 25% for the top 10 equity raisers (Opay, MNT-Halan, TymeBank, Flutterwave, Sun King, Interswitch, M-Kopa, Chipper Cash, Andela & Moove), with four companies making both top 10 lists (MNT-Halan, Sun King, M-Kopa & Moove). In most years, the top 10 debt raisers capture 75-80% of the annual total, while for equity the equivalent range is closer to 40-50%.

7️⃣. Energy and Fintech dominate debt. Add Transport & Logistics, and you have almost the whole market. Between 2021 and 2025, Energy + Fintech represented about 60% of debt deals and roughly 83% of total announced debt. With Transport & Logistics, that rises to roughly 76% of debt deals and more than 93% of the total, showing just how concentrated debt remains in a small set of sectors and business models.​​​

8️⃣. ​West Africa often leads by number of debt deals; East Africa often leads by amount of debt raised. West Africa regularly contributes the largest share of debt deals, while East Africa repeatedly captures the largest facilities, especially in the Energy sector. But this is exactly where concentration matters: one or two very large rounds can redraw the regional picture in a single year.

9️⃣. African start-up debt is not one market. It is at least four. The lender base breaks down into crowd/retail platforms (e.g. Lendahand, Bettervest, Trine), DFIs and public institutions (e.g. IFC, BII, DFC), commercial banks (e.g. Standard Bank, CIB, Rand Merchant Bank), and specialist non-bank lenders such as private credit or structured debt funds (e.g. Symbiotics, Lendable, Verdant). Those are not just different capital providers; they are different products, different underwriting logics, and often different sector or geographical preferences (especially for commercial banks).

​🔟. The lender mix is becoming much more institutional. In 2021, crowd and retail lenders still appeared in about 35% of debt deals; by 2025, that figure was down to about 3%. Over the same period, DFIs, banks, and especially specialist non-bank lenders became much more visible, suggesting the market is moving away from smaller platform-led debt and toward more structured institutional financing.

Again, the point is not that debt is overtaking equity. It is that debt is becoming a more important layer of the African start-up funding stack, with its own logic, its own repeat players, and its own patterns. To some extent, it remains a selective instrument, available to a relatively small number of later-stage ventures and heavily skewed toward a few sectors and large borrowers. But it is no longer an exception. It is becoming part of the market’s core plumbing.

Remember, our database lets you do double-click on every announced round on the continent, with country, sector, stage, investor and instrument-level detail. If you want to interrogate the market beyond the weekly headlines, or build your investor outreach plan, that is exactly what it is for. If you’re interested, use this discount code. Unless you want to apply to potentially get 2 years of free access… but you’ll have to do that here by March 27. A bientôt, Max

While it is helpful to follow the evolution of start-up funding on a monthly basis, for most of us who are in it for the long haul, long-term trends are much more telling. This is why this week I wanted to update an analysis I have done in the past, that focuses on 12-month rolling periods, and therefore smoothes out monthly variations and seasonal effects. And something comes out very clearly: start-up funding in Africa has reached a new cruising speed since mid-2025, and it’s held to it very steadily since.

Most of you will already be familiar with the different ‘chapters’ we have seen play out, with funding accelerating at breakneck speed from mid-2021 onwards, peaking in mid-2022 at a staggering ~$6.3b (July 2021-June 2022), then falling through 2023 and reaching a low point of ~$2b two years later (July 2023-June 2024) - still higher that pre-heatwave levels though -, and then back on a more modest growth trajectory.

That’s where the recent plateau comes in: since August 2025, 12-month rolling funding has sat in a pretty tight band around $3.1b (±$90m). That kind of stability is rare since 2020, except for another plateau in late 2022 post-heatwave, before the numbers started to slide further. Over the past few months, not only has funding been stable, but so is the case for the rolling number of ventures clearing meaningful thresholds: the count of ventures raising $1m+ or $10m+ for instance are holding steady around 211 (±5) and 65 (±4). These numbers have actually been relatively flat since as far back as mid-2024, as opposed to dollar amounts. In plain terms, the ecosystem seems to have found a stable run-rate, at least for now.

Another interesting point is what this new normal is made of. Pre-heatwave, the market was overwhelmingly an equity story. Today, debt has become an important pillar of start-up financing on the continent. In the current plateau, debt represents roughly two-fifths of funding (39% ±3%). Since August 2025, 12-month rolling equity funding has been around $1.8b (±$125m) and debt around $1.2b (±$125m). This is the clearest structural change in the data: stability is back, but with different mechanics, and more maturity.

One final comment on the early-stage engine, to insist on a point Grégoire de Padirac made in his guest post back in January. The $100k–$1m layer is certainly thinner in deal volume than it was during the heatwave. But relatively speaking, this is not a “small-deals-only” phenomenon: the contraction in the number of ventures raising $100k–$1m since the heatwave is broadly comparable to the contraction in ventures raising $1m+, at least in relative terms. So the story of the past couple of years is not that the base fell out while the top stayed intact. But if this is truly the new cruising speed, the challenge is clear: can the market keep funding enough new entrants to build a pipe of future larger deals, without needing another heatwave to boost immediate and future growth?

If you need access to the underlying data ready to be sliced by country, sector, stage, or investor, that’s what our Africa: The Big Deal database is for. You can access it here at a discount. Or if you’re a start-up and feeling lucky, apply to join our ‘Data for Founders’ initiative - in partnership with FMO Ventures - for a chance to get free access to the database for the next two years (and more). Have a good day! Max

40 start-ups announced a total of $272m in funding in February 2026 through $100k+ deals (equity, debt, grants; exc. exits) in Africa. From an amount perspective, that is a clear improvement on January’s $174m, and also slightly above the previous 12-month monthly average of $254m. 54% were raised as equity; 45% as debt. The number of start-ups announcing funding also rebounded from January, although it remained a little below the prior 12-month average of 46 per month. But overall, after a muted January, February brought the numbers back to the level of activity we’d grown to expect in 2025.

As usual, the month’s total was driven disproportionately by a relatively small number of larger tickets. Spiro in Benin alone announced $57m in debt across two transactions, while Breadfast in Egypt secured $50m in pre-Series C funding. GoCab in Côte d’Ivoire wasn’t far behind with $45m raised across debt and equity. Also announcing over $20m in February were Terra Industries in Nigeria who topped up their previously announced round with an additional $22m; Enko Education in South Africa who secured $22m in debt; and Lula - also in South Africa - who secured $21m from DFI FMO. In other words, February’s recovery was real but it was also quite concentrated, with these six ventures alone attracting 80% of the funding. Geographically speaking, Egypt ($64m), Benin ($57m), Côte d’Ivoire ($45m) and South Africa ($44m) made up the top four. From a regional point of view, West Africa dominated and attracted more than half of all the funding (53%), followed by Northern (24%) and Southern Africa (21%). What is puzzling is that East Africa - which topped the charts in 2025 with 34% of all the funding - ranks #4 in February with just 3% of the total, and barely more if we look at 2026 YTD (4%). Something we’ll want to keep an eye on…

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With February in the books, 2026 is back ahead of where 2025 stood at the same point. Start-ups in Africa have raised $446m+ in January-February 2026, versus $417m during the same period in 2025. So while January had suggested a slower start to the year, February has effectively put 2026 back on track. Not dramatically ahead, and certainly not enough to settle what kind of year this will be yet, but ahead nonetheless.

Now: over to March! :)... As usual, if you want to run your own analysis, or need data to prepare to raise your next rounds, don’t miss our database which you should really access with this discount code. And actually, if you’re a start-up and haven’t applied to our Data for Founders initiative - in partnership with FMO Ventures -, you’d better apply now as the March 20 deadline is fast approaching...

Have a good week! Max

Africa’s equity funding climbed 24% YoY in 2025. Put next to the global rebound (+46%), that can look underwhelming. But the global number is a very distorted benchmark because it is overwhelmingly a US story. Indeed, equity funding in the US grew 66% YoY and accounted for roughly 70% of the global tally. So when US mega-rounds accelerate, ‘global funding’ mechanically spikes even if most other regions are growing less. In fact, the ‘rest of the world’ grew +15% YoY in 2025. In that context, Africa’s +24% YoY is not a lagging indicator. 2025 was a genuinely strong year, comparatively. It beat Europe (+18% YoY), LatAm (+17%), China (+19%) and South East Asia (+18%), and it looks even better next to India’s near-flat performance (+1%). So, Yes: Africa remains small in absolute numbers - $2.2b out of roughly $470b globally i.e. 0.4% of the total -, but in terms of YoY dynamics vs peers (outside the US), the continent’s 2025 performance compares well.

This underrepresentation becomes very real when you compare the continent’s numbers to market or city peers. In 2025, start-ups in Africa raised roughly the same amount of equity as in Sweden (~$2b) and sits in the same bracket as a single city like Toronto, Canada (~$2.4b). Brazil (~$2.6b) is slightly ahead. KSA (~$1.7b) and Raleigh, USA (~$1.7b) are not far behind. In India, one vertical slice - fintech (~$2.4b) - matches Africa’s continent-wide total. There’s an upside to being an underdog though: for seasoned investors, that mismatch is an opportunity. The best gains often come from markets not yet mature, where allocation is still thin relative to potential…

A quick note on sources: We’ve only used equity numbers here, for comparability’s sake. The Africa numbers come from our own Africa: The Big Deal proprietary database, of course. For Indian fintech, we have used Tracxn; and MAGNiTT for KSA. For all other cities and markets, as well as for global and regional trends, we’ve used CB Insights.

Now, if you want to go beyond totals and high-level trends, our database lets you dig into the deals behind this 2025 rebound by country, city, sector, stage and ticket size, with investor data as well. Don’t forget to claim your discount here. And to check our ‘Data for Founders’ initiative for a chance to be one of the 100 start-ups selected for a free two-year subscription, and more. Bye for now! Max

In 2025, the sector ranking looked familiar, yet the market shape continued to evolve. After dropping from $3b in 2023 to $2.2b in 2024, total funding rebounded to $3.2b in 2025, while the number of companies raising $100k+ stayed broadly stable. In fact, 2025 was driven by a handful of very large cheques and facilities, not by a broad expansion in the number of funded companies, especially those raising smaller tickets.

Fintech stayed #1 on amount raised, but it did not broaden. The sector raised $1.2b in 2025 (vs. $1.1b in 2024) across 124 companies (down from 2024). Top-level concentration eased a bit: in 2025, the top 5 Fintech raisers (M-Kopa, Wave, MNT-Halan, Moniepoint, ValU) accounted for $607m (52%) of the sector total, down from $618m (58%) in 2024 and 66% in 2023. While equity still did most of the work ($685m), debt was large enough ($467m) to keep the topline high even with fewer funded companies. Wave’s $137m debt facility and MNT-Halan’s bond issuance are good examples of the kind of capital that can move a sector total. One note on the exit front: 2025 recorded 49 exits in total (up from 22 in 2024) and the skew was clear towards fintech who accounted for 19 of those.

Energy is where 2025 really changed shape. The sector raised $857m across 50 companies, rebounding from $445m in 2024 to roughly its 2023 level ($792m). Concentration continued: in 2025, the top 5 Energy companies accounted for $701m (82%) of the sector total, up from $351m (79%) in 2024, and 75% in 2023. Debt is the conduit for both growth and concentration in the sector: $611m of Energy’s 2025 total (71%) came through debt, and it was heavily stacked. d.light’s $300m and Sun King’s $156m raises did a lot of the work, with other large facilities like Burn’s $80m reinforcing the same pattern. This is why Energy looks structurally different than other sectors, with a small number of very large deals - disproportionately debt - pulling the line up.

If we step away from Fintech and Energy, the next sectors are much smaller on amount raised but often quite broad on participation. Logistics & Transport raised $309m across 63 companies and was overwhelmingly equity-led (87%). Healthcare raised $211m across 49 companies, again mainly equity-led, but one raise did a lot of the work: LXE Hearing’s $100m round alone represented ~47% of the sector total. Agriculture & Food sits behind them on amount raised ($122m), but shows up on breadth (62 companies).

One cross-cut that matters here is Climate Tech. It is not a sector per se but straddles across multiple sectors (Energy, Agriculture, Transport & Logistics etc.). In 2025, Climate Tech companies raised $1.2b across 149 companies, which is 38% of the total amount raised in the year. That compares with $761m (34%) in 2024, and $1.1b (38%) in 2023. What is worth adding is the breadth trend. Since 2023, Climate Tech has consistently increased its share of funded companies, from 26% in 2023 to 28% in 2024 and 29% in 2025. Back in 2021–2022, it was closer to 18-20%. So this is one of the few themes where we can say both that it is large on amount raised and that participation is creeping up.

If you want to go beyond the headline sectors, our database has the full company list behind each total, plus the filters that make many cuts possible (stage, geography, instrument, Climate Tech tags, and more). As always, subscribers to the newsletter (more than 15,000 of you! ) get a special discount. We’ll be back next week with another slice of the data. See you! Max