New York closed $8.2 billion in SaaS deals across more than 320 companies in 2025, with enterprise software taking 62% of total funding, and the city now carries more fintech and vertical SaaS expertise than San Francisco in several categories. Investors here focus heavily on sales efficiency metrics and customer acquisition costs, backed by firms like Eniac Ventures, a New York-based early-stage fund making initial checks in the $250,000 to $1 million range, and Bain Capital Ventures, which has invested in more than 400 companies with a focus on enterprise software and infrastructure.
OpenRouter’s Unicorn Run
OpenRouter, a New York-based AI gateway company that lets developers send a single API call out to more than 400 large language models, announced a $113 million Series B in May 2026, valuing the company at roughly $1.3 billion post-money. The round was led by CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, with participation from NVentures (Nvidia’s venture arm), ServiceNow Ventures, MongoDB Ventures, Snowflake Ventures and Databricks Ventures, alongside returning investors Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures. The valuation more than doubled in eleven months, up from an estimated $547 million post-money at its Series A in June 2025, while weekly token processing rose from 5 trillion to 25 trillion in the past six months alone.
Vertical SaaS Beyond Fintech
Cents, which provides software, payments and point-of-sale tools built specifically for laundromats and laundry businesses, raised $140 million in a Series C in March 2026, one of the largest rounds for a vertical SaaS company anywhere in the city this year. Probook, another New York-based startup, raised $40 million in new funding including a $34 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, building AI-powered dispatch, scheduling and messaging tools for home service businesses.
Why New York’s SaaS Bets Look Different
What connects OpenRouter, Cents and Probook is that none of them are fintech, despite New York’s reputation as a finance-first startup city. Investors here are increasingly backing vertical SaaS for unglamorous, overlooked industries like laundromats and home services alongside horizontal AI infrastructure like OpenRouter’s model routing layer, a broader bet than the city’s SaaS scene made five years ago.
For related coverage, see our roundups of New York AI startups and New York cybersecurity startups.
