Is Your State an Early Established or Mature Startup Ecosystem
Is Your State an Early Established or Mature Startup Ecosystem
Author:
Peter Walker
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Read time:
1 minute
Published date:
January 14, 2026
Carta classifies state ecosystems by share of total 2025 startup capital: early is under 1%, established is 1-5%, and mature is 5%+—with Delaware excluded...
Is your state an early, established, or mature startup ecosystem?
Definitions:
Early: 0-1% of total capital raised by startups was in this state
Established: 1-5% of capital
Mature: 5% +
Caveats!
Just looking at startups on Carta (60,000 and counting!)
Just looking at 2025 fundraising ($118 billion and counting on Carta)
Sorry Delaware, had to exclude you due to address weirdness given everybody incorporates in DE.
Probably this animation holds some familiar winners.
California is far and away the leader in venture across the sectors. Side note - pls, pls, pls don't ruin this with a terribly-written wealth tax, anyone involved in CA politics.
But different places emerge as Established depending on the industry.
In AI, Washington, Colorado, Utah all hit the Established mark.
In Fintech, Florida and Illinois join in.
In Energy, a lot of state take part.
You can start up hundreds of places across the US these days 🙏
Author: Peter Walker
Peter Walker runs the Insights team at Carta, focused on discovering key data and narratives across the private capital ecosystem. In a former life, he was a marketing executive for a media analytics startup and led the data visualization team at the Covid Tracking Project.