CNBC.COM
Early-stage tech startups in the U.S. are raising more money than their peers did five years ago, despite employing 16% fewer workers, according to research from labor analytics firm Revelio Labs.
One potential reason: More companies are keeping headcounts lean as they adopt artificial intelligence tools to automate more and more administrative tasks.
"Today's startups seem to promise more with less," Revelio Labs data scientist Dean Boerner wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. "Even as funding rounds continue to grow, teams are leaner than they were just a few years ago, a sign that both founders and investors are prioritizing efficiency — whether driven by AI tools and automation or more disciplined spending."
Median funding for U.S.-based tech startups' Series A rounds is $15 million per company in 2025, up 50% since 2020, according to Revelio Labs' data. Over that same period, the median funding per employee at Series A-stage startups roughly doubled to $320,000, up from $160,000 — because median headcounts at similar-stage startups have dipped 17.5% to 47 employees, down from from 57.
Those figures suggest that early-stage startups could be relying more on AI tools to automate tasks, allowing them to maintain smaller headcounts without sacrificing too much productivity during rapid-growth mode, Boerner noted. Such a trend could be a factor of founders' growing dependence on AI, investors' eagerness for startups that use AI to minimize spending or both.
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Across nearly every industry, some leaders are embracing AI in ways that could reshape the job market and change how workers perform their roles on a daily basis. High-profile CEOs from Amazon's Andy Jassy to Ford's Jim Farley have stated plans to either reduce corporate workforces or cap their employee growth as they invest more in AI infrastructure.
"It's very clear that AI is going to change literally every job," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told The Wall Street Journal in September, discussing his company's plans to freeze global headcount over the next three years. Walmart's revenue is projected to grow over that period without an increase in manpower due to wider adoption of AI technologies, he added.
The number of U.S. workers using AI tools in the workplace has nearly doubled in two years, reaching 40% in 2025 compared to 21% in 2023, according to Gallup. The results have been mixed, with 95% of companies not yet seeing a measurable revenue return from their AI investments, according to a July report from Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers.
The business that are successfully using AI to boost their revenues? Mostly early-stage startups run by young entrepreneurs who've built their processes around AI models specifically tailored to their businesses, the MIT report found.
The Revelio Labs data may corroborate the sentiment that AI can help small companies grow more quickly. "If this path continues, the next generation of fast-growing companies may be defined not by rapid headcount expansion, but by smaller teams achieving more with every dollar raised," Boerner wrote.
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