Venture funding for social-media startups is coming back to life

These days, entrepreneurs dreaming of building "the next Facebook" face a tough road. There are more apps than ever, and giants like Instagram and TikTok have all but locked up users' attention in the social-media market. Competition has sharpened dramatically as a result, and investors are increasingly chasing flashier deals in artificial intelligence (AI) instead.

According to analytics firm PitchBook, the flow of venture capital (VC — high-risk investment in early-stage companies) into social-media startups peaked in 2021. Back then, apps like BeReal and Clubhouse caught investors' attention as challengers to Instagram and TikTok, drawing a combined $2.2 billion across 239 deals that year. Deal counts have declined year after year since: 2025 saw just 97 deals totaling $330 million.

But from the start of 2026 through July 21, PitchBook recorded more than 50 deals totaling $355 million — already surpassing all of 2025's full-year total. If that pace holds, the sector could be looking at a modest revival of investor interest.

So which startups are raising money right now? One is Fizz, an anonymous social app for Gen Z, which just closed a strategic funding round as it expands into global markets. Another is Corner, a social-mapping app that lets users save and share local spots like restaurants, bars, and shops, now gearing up for a Series A (a startup's first major round of institutional funding).

In the bigger picture, consumer social startups — everything from social networks to dating and entertainment apps — accounted for only a small slice of all deals in 2025. According to PitchBook, total venture deal volume in 2025 reached $513 billion, with the bulk going to AI and SaaS (software delivered as a cloud-based service) projects — more than 11,800 AI deals were recorded in all. FirstMark Capital partner Rick Heitzmann told Business Insider: "A few years ago, every investor ran away from consumer."

Meanwhile, the investors who remain in the market are still eagerly hunting for new projects. Funds like Menlo Ventures and Forerunner, along with new funds set up by former VC professionals striking out on their own, are backing networking, dating, and AI-driven social projects. One startup, Eigen, is building an AI-powered social network, aiming to turn AI agents into a "mutual friend" that introduces people to one another. The company announced in April that it had raised a $15 million seed round.

It's worth noting that PitchBook's methodology has its own limits — some dating apps, AI companions, or chat apps like Eigen aren't classified under the "social" category and so fall outside these statistics. So even as AI reignites interest in consumer social startups, the central question remains open: which of them will ultimately manage to stick around for the long haul?