The AI gold rush has officially jumped the shark. According to TechCrunch's latest tally, 55 U.S. AI startups each raised $100 million or more in 2025. That's $5.5 billion minimum, probably closer to $10 billion with follow-on rounds.

Let that sink in. We could have solved actual problems with that money. Instead, we're funding the 47th 'AI-powered customer service chatbot' and the 12th 'revolutionary AI content generator' that writes worse than a high school student with ChatGPT open in another tab.

TL;DR: The Reality Check

• What Happened: 55 AI startups each raised $100M+ in 2025 to solve problems ranging from 'email' to 'taking meeting notes.'
• Why It's Absurd: This represents peak bubble behavior where investors throw money at anything with 'AI' in the name, regardless of whether the problem needs solving.
• What You Should Know: Your next startup pitch should include 'AI-powered' before literally anything. 'AI-powered toothbrush'? $200M valuation, minimum.

The Absurdity in Detail

Let's play a game. I'll describe a startup, you guess how much they raised. 'AI that helps you write better emails.' If you guessed $120 million, congratulations! You understand modern venture capital.

Another one: 'AI that analyzes your calendar to suggest when you should take breaks.' That one got $180 million. Because apparently humans need artificial intelligence to tell them they're tired after eight straight hours of meetings.

The pattern is painfully obvious. Take any mundane business task that's existed since the 1990s. Add 'AI-powered' as a prefix. Raise nine figures. Hire a PR firm to write breathless TechCrunch articles about 'revolutionizing' said mundane task.

Why This Actually Matters

This isn't just funny money theater. This misallocation of capital has real consequences. While 55 startups fight over who can build the best AI meeting note-taker, actual hard problems go unfunded.

Climate tech? Healthcare diagnostics? Education tools for underserved communities? Those get scraps while VCs chase the 19th 'AI-powered marketing automation platform.' The bubble is actively making the world worse by directing resources toward nonsense.

Worse, this creates a generation of entrepreneurs who learn that the path to funding isn't solving real problems—it's slapping 'AI' on a mediocre idea and hiring a good pitch deck designer.

The Reality Behind the Hype

Here's the dirty secret: most of these startups are using the same underlying models. They're all fine-tuning GPT-5 or Claude-3 or whatever Anthropic calls their latest model. The 'innovation' is often just a wrapper.

That $150M meeting summarizer? Probably 80% OpenAI API calls, 15% basic web interface, 5% marketing budget. The 'proprietary AI' is often just prompt engineering dressed up as revolutionary technology.

The bubble will pop when investors realize they've funded 55 slightly different interfaces to the same three foundation models. The survivors will be the ones who actually built something novel—or at least have the best sales teams.

What Comes Next

2026 will be the year of consolidation. Or as I like to call it, 'The Great AI Pivot.' Watch as these 55 startups suddenly discover their 'true mission' is something completely different when the funding dries up.

The meeting AI will pivot to 'workplace wellness.' The email AI will become 'relationship intelligence.' The content generator will rebrand as 'digital twin creator.' Same team, same technology, new buzzwords.

My prediction? By 2027, we'll look back at this list and laugh at how obvious the bubble was. The real question is how much actual innovation we sacrificed at the altar of AI hype.