The Seed 100 and Seed 40 lists, now in their fifth year, are designed to objectively recognize and celebrate the top seed investors globally. Termina, a company founded and led by Chief Technology Officer Jake Ellowitz, partners with Business Insider to compile these rankings. This year’s lists are particularly notable due to the significant role of artificial intelligence (AI) in seed-stage startups, reflecting a burgeoning trend that will likely shape future iterations of the lists. To produce the 2025 rankings, Termina analyzed performance across 25 areas using data from Crunchbase and PitchBook. The criteria for inclusion in the lists are stringent and focused on both past and potential future success. Only active investors with at least five investments between 2010 and 2025 were considered, with a primary emphasis on successful exits, such as initial public offerings (IPOs) or acquisitions. These exits needed to demonstrate meaningful value creation beyond merely raising capital. Additionally, intermediate signs of success, like substantial follow-on funding, were crucial. To ensure relevance, investors had to maintain moderate to high seed investing activity over the past two years. This year, the pool of eligible investors expanded by 5% to 1,974. Notable trends include a rise in female representation, from 8% in 2021 to 11% in 2024. Among the final selections, 26 investors improved their rankings, 27 remained the same or dropped, and 47 newcomers entered the lists. Twenty-seven investors from the inaugural 2021 list made the cut again. The AI landscape has undergone a significant transformation over the past two decades. The early wave of AI seed investing from 2010 to 2018 primarily involved companies incorporating discriminative models into their operations. These models predict outcomes based on input data and were integral to the success of platforms like Uber, Instacart, and Airbnb. However, the current surge is driven by generative models, exemplified by the release of OpenAI’s GPT-4 in 2023. These models can create new data samples based on learned distributions, and they have quickly become central to many emerging startups. The share of companies with material AI components in their products jumped from 13% to 24% in just two years. Termina’s analysis highlights that AI investments, especially those in generative models, are rapidly expanding. While the full impact of this trend is yet to be seen—given that seed investments typically require several years to mature—it is expected to significantly influence the Seed 100 rankings in the coming years. The charts provided by Termina illustrate the steady growth in AI seed investments, with a notable spike occurring in the past year. Industry insiders commend Termina's approach to ranking seed investors, noting the balanced consideration of both historical and forward-looking data. They see AI as a key technological driver in the startup ecosystem, particularly the generative models that are reshaping how businesses operate and innovate. Termina’s methodology is viewed as robust and transparent, providing a reliable framework for identifying successful seed investors. Company Profile: Termina is a leading analytics firm that collaborates with venture capital and private equity firms, as well as sovereign wealth funds and executives, to evaluate investment opportunities. Founded by Jake Ellowitz and leveraging advanced data analytics, Termina aims to bring objectivity and precision to the often subjective world of early-stage investing. Their work on the Seed 100 and Seed 40 lists underscores their commitment to highlighting and nurturing seed-stage talent and innovation.