Indiana Startup Funding: Q3 2025

Indiana startups raised $66.3 million in Q3 2025, a steep drop from the $153 million of the previous quarter and the $184 million of the same period last year. It marks the state’s lowest quarter since mid-2020,  more than five years ago.

Almost half of that total came from a single Growth Equity round for GeoH, a company helping home-care agencies improve cash flow through faster reimbursement and billing automation. Beyond that, to say activity was thin would be an understatement: the top five rounds made up $62 million of the total, and only two other businesses gained any publicly reported investment in Indiana this quarter… one of which was a $2 million grant.

The contrast with national trends is stark. 

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Across the U.S., total funding almost doubled both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year and California absorbed most of that growth, driven by mega-rounds for AI leaders Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI. Meanwhile, Massachusetts and New York also roughly doubled their totals to $3.7 billion and $8.3 billion respectively.

Indiana, by comparison, while quiet was not without substance. 

As we wrote earlier this year in our founder profile of RJ Talyor, companies like Backstroke - which raised a $2.8m seed round in July to help get the quarter off to a great start - are building patiently within the state’s tight-knit ecosystem, focusing on steady traction rather than spectacle. That long-game mentality has been a defining trait of Midwest founders for years, but it also means headline numbers can look muted when no outsized round lands in a given quarter. As is the case here.

In fact, Q2’s total may be considered ‘artificially inflated’ by a single $90 million raise. Had that fallen into Q3 instead, the narrative would read very differently. These figures act as a reminder that in most Midwest states, outliers can still set the tone. One big round can make the whole scene appear more buoyant than perhaps is justifiable.

The bigger picture is less about the quarter’s dip and more about what it reveals: that Indiana’s ecosystem remains driven by a capital-efficient companies operating in specialized niches as they do across much of the region — healthcare services, manufacturing tech, and enterprise software among them — rather than the AI-first bets dominating the coasts and attracting all the capital. The global AI boom has yet to materialize in any meaningful way in fundraising terms in the Midwest, and that absence is starting to show in comparative data.

Still, a quiet quarter does not mean stagnation. Several regional funds have raised new capital this year and are actively deploying into early-stage companies. Organizations like Elevate Ventures, IU Ventures, and High Alpha continue to seed founders who build sustainably, and are often profitable sooner than their coastal peers.

As we head into Q4, the broader market signals are mixed: stocks are up, crypto is up… but so is unemployment. Founders and investors alike will be watching whether Indiana’s steady-as-she-goes approach holds up through the end to the year. If the state’s foundations - laid over many years of patient ecosystem building - remain solid, this slow quarter may simply be a blip before momentum returns and the impact of capital injections elsewhere, begin to flow through.