I’ve been hearing a lot about how intense competition is for Series A investments lately. Investors that typically look to invest in more mature startups, say at the Series B or above rounds, are crowding into Series A rounds for fear of missing the next major winner.

Like much else these days, artificial intelligence gets the credit (or blame) for this new dynamic. Venture capitalists are watching revenues triple or quadruple over a year, or less, at AI application startups such as Suno or coding assistant developers like Lovable. Funding rounds that used to happen every year or two are happening within three months of each other, as our scoop on Applied Compute shows. That’s pushed later stage investors to elbow into early investments. And the size and valuation of these investments has also ballooned.