Funding Rounds & Valuation

The staged way startups raise money, and the price investors agree the company is worth at each stage.

Startups typically raise money in stages: at the seed and angel rounds, often only a team and an idea exist; Series A, B, and C correspond to product validation, scaling, and expansion; Pre-IPO is the last round before going public. In each round, investors exchange money for shares at an agreed valuation, and “post-money valuation” refers to the company's total value right after that round's cash comes in. A still-private startup valued above $1 billion is called a “unicorn,” a term coined by investor Aileen Lee in 2013. Embodied-AI headlines about “completing an A+ round worth hundreds of millions of RMB” or “valuation doubling” all use this vocabulary. A funding round only tells you about fundraising pace, not technology or revenue level, so it should be read alongside information like mass production and order volume.

ExampleFigure AI announced a Series C round of over $1 billion in September 2025, at a post-money valuation of $39 billion.

Also called

Angel / Series A–C / Pre-IPO / Unicorn

Related

Pre-IPO Tutoring · STAR Market · HKEX Chapter 18C · Embodied AI Bubble · Patient Capital

Sources

Unicorn (finance) - Wikipedia
Venture round - Wikipedia
Figure Exceeds $1B in Series C Funding at $39B Post-Money Valuation

As of

2025-09