Venture capital activity rose in Q3 in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area, ensuring 2025 will be a better year for South Florida startups raising funding than 2024, the latest Pitchbook data show.
Nationally, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro also retained its position as a top 10 VC hub by deal count, according to the Q3 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report out this morning.
Let’s take a deeper look at local, state and national trends.
The South Florida picture
It wasn’t a stellar quarter for South florida, but it was an improvement over Q2. For Q3 2025, PitchBook reported that the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area pulled in $754 million across 92 deals. That’s up from a revised $608 million raised across 75 deals in Q2. The average deal size in Q3 was $8.2 million, slightly up from Q2.
The total reported by PitchBook for the first three quarters was $2.3 billion across 261 deals.
Q3 top deals: According to PitchBook’s data, here were the top 10 rounds by companies headquartered in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area in Q3:
- MaintainX, a Miami- and San Francisco-based startup that provides software for industrial maintenance: $150 million.
- Syncromune, a Fort Lauderdale-based biotech startup in the oncology field: $131.8 million. Note: Syncromune’s funding round includes a $100 million deal reported in December 2024.
- Sola, a Miami-based developer of cybersecurity tools designed for simplifying security management and compliance: $35 million
- Meridian Fleet Services, a Miami-based company that supports and grows fleet service businesses: $26.6 million
- FundKite, a Miami-based provider of business funding and financial services for small and mid-sized businesses $26.4 million
- Unrivaled Basketball, the recently launched Miami-based women’s basketball league: $26 million
- Spire Home Systems, a Miami-based developer of home automation systems: $23.3 million
- Imagene, a Miami-based pioneer in multi‑modal foundation models for precision medicine: $23 million
- MyPrize, a Miami-based multi-player casino gaming startup: $21 million
- Dispatch, a Miami-based a data orchestration platform built specifically for wealth managemen: $18 million
The Q3 and year-to-date totals for South Florida will go higher. First of all, venture capital data lags; PitchBook and other sources revise their data constantly because new reporting comes in, rounds get reopened, startups relocate, etc. And not included by PitchBook among top deals were $20 million deals by Hope Hydration and Palm Tree Crew, among others, according to Refresh Miami’s reporting.
My reporting for eMerge Insights reports has found that the year-to-date tally is already at least $2.77 billion, already hitting last year’s total. Startups in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area were already on track for that, thanks to a super strong Q1, but an expected strong Q4 will make 2025 the best year since the 2022 high.
And how does our region rank nationally? Noting that 57% of Q3’s VC dollars went to San Francisco Bay Area companies, according to the report’s underlying data the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area slipped out of the top 10 by venture capital dollars, ranking 11th just behind Seattle and Atlanta in Q3. By deal count, however, the Miami metro ranked 6th, even with Austin, according to Pitchbook.
There were 9 exits for South Florida companies in Q3, with an exit value of $714 million disclosed. Touchland, a Miami-based personal care brand, represented $700 million in exit value, and Intelligent Observation exited for $14 million, according to revised data from Pitchbook. Of note are two large exits on the runway: vLex’s $1 billion deal to be acquired by Clio and Urbint’s $325 million deal to be acquired by Itron. Both deals are expected to close by the end of the year.
“We have seen numerous positives in the market, with the core leader being that liquidity has finally arrived … and in terms of deal flow, we are seeing pure domination from AI companies … This may be the most important and impactful technological revolution of the next several centuries,” FLF Partner Saxon Baum recently told me.
Indeed, AI-company investments just in the first half of 2025 in South Florida totaled $830 million, representing 42% of the activity, according to my research to the recent midyear eMerge Insights Florida Venture Capital Report. That’s almost equal to Miami AI startups’ intake for all of 2024.
What’s more, recent legislation is making VC accessible to more investors and relaxing several rules for fund managers, which will make it easier to both raise and capitalize on existing assets in the portfolio, Baum added.
The Florida picture
Statewide, according to data underlying Pitchbook’s new report, Florida companies drew $1.07 billion across 148 deals in Q3 2025, up from a revised $1.03 billion across 136 deals in Q2. South Florida continues to drive in most of the venture activity, representing 70% of deal value and 62% of the deal count.
Still, just like for the Miami metro, the state is on track to have a higher year in 2025. In the first three quarters, Florida startups attracted nearly $3.37 billion across 437 deals, according to PitchBook, and that too is likely to go higher because of incomplete data at this time. By my tally, companies across the state have attracted at least $3.85 billion so far. Like the Miami metro, the state is also on track to log one of the highest totals on record, behind 2021 and 2022. Stay tuned for my upcoming eMerge Insights full-year report on statewide trends.
Top deals around the state outside South Florida in Q3 were led by Climate First Bank, a St. Petersburg-based financial services company raising a later-state round. That was followed by Sarasota based network management software startup Tenex.AI, which raised a $27 million Series A, and Kinto of Orlando, a financial services and cybersecurity software firm, that raised a $25 million Series A.
As for other Florida metro areas in Q3, Orlando attracted $105.6 million across 12 deals, down from $176 million across 13 deals in Q2. For the three quarters, the Orlando metro companies pulled in more than $480 million across 39 deals.
The Tampa metro area attracted $127.93 million across 20 deals, down from $176.91 across 22 deals in Q2 (and over $343 million across 57 deals for the three quarters), according to PitchBook’s data. Separately, the nearby Sarasota metro, also typically considered part of Tampa Bay, logged another $39 million.
“We’ve obviously seen a big uptick in AI-related deal flow, but I think most notable is the quality of opportunities we are seeing,” DeepWork Capital Partner Ken Hall recently told me. “For domain-specific AI, we’re actually seeing strong opportunities in highly regulated sectors like healthcare, financial services, and government. For ‘adjacent enablers’ of AI, we’re specifically looking into energy and infrastructure that will be critical to meet the growing demand of the technology.”
In Q3 across the state, there were 13 exits, but the 4 additional exits outside of South Florida had no exit value disclosed.
The national picture
Now let’s take a broader look. By the numbers, Q3 venture activity looked a lot like Q2 across the United States. In Q3 2025, VC firms deployed $80.9 billion across 3,175 deals, up from a revised $77.1 billion across 3,528 deals in Q2, according to the Venture Monitor. But deal value through the first three quarters of 2025 has already surpassed each of the past three years.
And once again, AI continued to propel the venture capital activity, accounting for a record 39.5% of deal count in Q3. Activity has been nearly steady, emphasizing a consistent influx of companies, especially at the pre-seed and seed stages, said Kyle Stanford, director of US Venture Research for Pitchbook in PitchBook’s First Look report.
Nationally, large deals are dominating, with almost all of these deals focused on AI. In the third quarter, 64.3% of deal value in the US has gone to AI. Fueled by AI, US dealmaking is on track for roughly an 8% increase in total deal count over 2024, potentially making it the third most active year in the past decade, Stanford said.
Exit activity, particularly IPOs, shows renewed liquidity in the US VC market. Although the exit value dipped just below Q2, the third quarter ranks as the second-highest valued quarter since 2021. And as expected, AI has had a significant influence on exits, Stanford continued. So far in 2025, 40% of the exit value came from AI, with notable exits from companies like CoreWeave. The 317 exits by AI startups have already set a record, too.
Adds NVCA President and CEO Bobby Franklin: “While fundraising and exits haven’t yet returned to pre-pandemic highs, deal values are climbing across key sectors, including AI, manufacturing, robotics, and space tech, many of which have already surpassed their full-year 2024 investment levels. This momentum isn’t just encouraging; it’s essential.”
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