For a few years, telling a venture capitalist you wanted to start a social media app was a tough conversation. The pitch is getting easier again.
Venture capital is money from people who back young private companies.
The number of deals has gone down every year since. By 2025, social startups had shrunk to 97 deals worth $330 million combined.
But 2021 was a strong year for venture cash in every corner of the market, so some cooling was normal. There was more to the slump than a cold market, though. The same year social startups raised that $330 million, PitchBook estimates total U.S. venture deal flow hit $513 billion.
Most of that money went to AI and software sold as a subscription, known as SaaS. The research firm logged over 11,800 AI-related investments in 2025.
Social media, by comparison, was a tiny corner of a very busy market, and now that corner is waking up.
The new companies are not trying to replace the big social platforms. They are going after narrow slices of social life.
Fizz, an anonymous social app aimed at Gen Z, has raised a new round of funding to support global expansion. Corner, a social mapping app for saving and sharing local spots, is getting ready to raise its first major venture round, known as a Series A.
But PitchBook's social category leaves out some dating and AI companion startups, including Eigen, so the official numbers actually undercount this wave.
"Everyone fled consumer a couple years ago," Rick Heitzmann, cofounder of FirstMark Capital, told Business Insider. The recent deals suggest that fear has started to lift.
Social media startups are still private, so they are not something you can buy and sell in a standard brokerage account. But the comeback is worth paying attention to if your portfolio touches tech or if you own shares in larger companies that might buy these startups later.
The signal is not about Fizz or Corner. It is about where venture investors are willing to place early bets.
After chasing AI for years, they are starting to take chances on social connection again. Those are risky bets, and plenty of them will not work out.
That is normal for venture capital. For your portfolio, the real takeaway is that money has started moving again in a category that looked dead in 2025. If one of these startups grows into something big enough to go public or get bought, this is the moment that set it on that path.