A Window to the Future 🔮
Five Months In: A Roundup Of Our 2025 Fast Facts
Today’s piece is brought to you by Imagine AI LIVE.
🚨 The countdown is on! We’re just 3 days away from this year’s Imagine AI LIVE conference, and I’m thrilled to be delivering another keynote!
🎟️ P.S. Use the promo code below to save $$$ on your tickets 👇
IMAGINE AI LIVE '25 isn’t just another event— it’s your ticket to leapfrog competitors still scrambling to understand AI's potential. Join industry pioneers at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas and get practical strategies to implement AI that drives immediate results.
Attend on May 28-30 at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas and you can:
Accelerate your AI journey by years, not months
Connect with cross-industry innovators who've already solved your challenges
Transform theoretical AI knowledge into actionable implementation roadmaps
Secure Your Competitive Edge – use code AIDOESNTWAIT15 and save 15%!
⚡️ Fast Facts
Each edition of EIEIO brings you five “Fast Facts,” highlighting key insights across these categories: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Education, Impact, and Opportunity. Below, we’ve compiled some of the most eye-catching and impactful figures we’ve uncovered in 2025 so far.
May 2025
~10% – The percentage of Pre-Seed advisors who receive 1% or more equity. (Peter Walker)
24% – The estimated percentage of corporate press releases that were generated by AI last year. (Forbes)
129% – The percentage change since 2000 in the portion of U.S. kindergarten and preschool teachers who are men. (Harper’s)
77 million - The number of Americans who held gym or fitness studio memberships in 2024, a record. (Fitt Insider)
2.1 million - The number of U.S. manufacturing jobs that could go unfilled by 2030 due to a lack of skilled workers. (Manufacturing Institute + Deloitte)
April 2025
$78.9 billion – Global late-stage venture dollar volume in Q1 2025, up from $27.8 billion in Q1 2024. (Crunchbase News)
$50 billion – The amount that major Swiss pharmaceutical player Roche is investing in the U.S. over the next five years, creating more than 12,000 new jobs in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Massachusetts and California. (Linkedin News)
$60 billion – The amount in federal funding American universities spent in 2023, >30x what they spent in 1952, accounting for inflation. (New York Times)
60% – The percentage of general admission ticket buyers at Coachella who used Buy-Now-Pay-Later to finance their tickets. (Unusual Whales)
0 – The number of Chipotle (“Mexican Grill”) locations in Mexico. The company announced it plans to expand into the country in 2026. (Sherwood)
42% – The percentage of all business owners who have never attended college. (Flippa)
55% – The percentage of Germans who would support the government introducing a universal basic income, compared to just 29% of Danes. (YouGov)
93% – The percentage of college students who are satisfied with virtual learning. (BestColleges)
8.9 million – The number of multiple jobholders in the US. At 5.4% of all employed workers it’s the highest level since April 2009. (Sherwood)
$116,633 – What Americans need to earn per year to afford the median priced home for sale, 81.8% more than the $64,160 they need to afford the typical apartment for rent. (Daily Chartbook)
March 2025
Nearly 1 in 3 – The portion of U.S. workers who are considering quitting their full-time jobs to pursue a side hustle. (Forbes)
68,656 – The number of records from the National Archives’ JFK Assassination Records Collection reviewed by Hebbia's Matrix product to pull evidence for and against conspiracy theories. (Hebbia)
$200,000 - The annual family income below which Harvard will now provide free tuition to students. (AP)
$1.2 billion – The upfront payment Chicago received in 2008 for leasing its parking meters to private UAE-based investors, a deal that forfeits ~$150 million/year in parking revenue until 2083. Chicago currently faces a nearly $1 billion budget deficit. (The TRiiBE)
56% – The percentage of U.S. engineers with Ph.D.s who were born abroad (Harper’s)
€10 million - The size of the new Harry Stebbings-led “Project Europe” fund, which will offer $200k checks to 18-25 year old entrepreneurs in Europe. (FT)
–33% – The percentage drop in current software developer job listings compared to 2020 levels, marking the lowest point in five years. This follows a pandemic-driven surge that peaked in August 2022 at +93% above 2020 levels. (Visual Capitalist)
71% – The percentage of parents who think their children love school, compared to 41% of students who report they love school. (FutureEd)
~60% – The percentage of all alcohol that is sold and consumed by the top 10% heaviest drinkers in the United States. (Newsweek)
>600 – The number of free online courses offered by Harvard. (Top Universities)
>75% – The percentage of vested equity was not exercised before it expired in 2024. (Carta)
$1.4 trillion – The total payment volume generated by businesses on Stripe in 2024, the equivalent of 1.3% of global GDP (Patrick Collison)
~25% – The percentage of undergraduate students who self-censor a few times a week in conversations with their peers and their professors, as well as during classroom discussions. (FIRE)
>$5 billion – The value of federal grants at Columbia University that are under review by the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. (Higher Ed Dive)
Up to $2 trillion – The amount of value that quantum technology may generate for businesses focused on finance, chemicals, life sciences and mobility by 2035. (McKinsey)
$9 billion – The valuation at which former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s start up, Thinking Machines Lab, aims to raise $1 billion. Murati departed OpenAI in September. (Crunchbase News)
59% – The percentage of people aged 18-64 in the United States who report having used linear TV in the past 12 months. (Statista)
#1 – K-12 schools have become the single most-targeted industry for ransomware attacks, with recovery costs averaging over $3.7 million. (The 74 Million)
15.3% – The percentage of members of Gen Z who have maxed-out credit cards, compared to 4.8% of Baby Boomers. (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)
~$1.6 trillion – The total amount Americans owed in student loans as of June 2024 – 42% more than what they owed a decade earlier. (Pew Research Center)
February 2025
95% – The claimed accuracy rate of Crunchbase's AI system in predicting startup fundraising events through backtesting. (VentureBeat)
4% – The percentage of SaaS companies that reach $1 million in revenue. .04% make it to $10 million. (VentureBeat)
90% – The percentage of schools that reported having “major difficulties” transporting students in 2024. (Harper’s)
7.1 million – The number of kids and adolescents in the U.S. received an ADHD diagnosis in 2022, one million more than in 2016. (NPR)
20 years – The amount of time it will take Boston to build “West Station” on the MBTA Commuter Rail Framingham/Worcester Line. It took six years to build the Transcontinental Railroad from Omaha to Sacramento. (Crémieux)
87% – The percentage of US small business owners who are Gen X or Baby Boomers (Business Dasher).
9 billion – The number of items Amazon delivered on the same or next day in 2024 (Sherwood News).
33% – The percentage of 8th graders who scored below the lowest level, “basic,” on the 2024 NAEP test (Minding The Gap).
186,000 – The number of pages in the code of federal regulations as of 2019, compared to 9,745 in 1950 (Heritage).
63% – The percentage of U.S. children who live in a home with married parents (TIME).
50% - The percentage of Y Combinator W24 companies that are building with AI. (Crunchbase News)
1 - The number of times a civilian jet has ever broken the sound barrier – this resulted from a successful test flight by Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 on Tuesday, in which the aircraft reached speeds of roughly 750 miles per hour. (CBS News)
Education: 67% – The percentage of US 8th graders who scored at a basic or better reading level in 2024, the lowest share since testing began in 1992. (Fortune)
1 billion – The number of hours streamed per day on YouTube TV in 2024. (Yahoo! Tech)
1/8 - The portion of NYC public school students who were homeless in 2024, up 23% year over year (Advocates for Children of New York)
January 2025
>5 million – The number of businesses that actively use TikTok. (BusinessDasher)
90% – The percentage of medical cases that ChatGPT accurately diagnoses on the basis of a list of symptoms, compared to 74% by doctors, on average. (Harper’s)
28 - The number of closures of degree-granting U.S. institutions in 2024. (The Hechinger Report)
~20% – The percentage of Americans who use marijuana every month. (Auren Hoffman)
>70% – The percentage of inmates in America’s prisons who cannot read above a fourth-grade level. (Governor’s Early Literacy Foundation)
$42 billion – Total venture dollars invested into AI-related startups in Q4 of 2024, a record (and ~3.5x the amount invested in Q4 2023). (Crunchbase News)
$46 billion – Total data center-related spending by Microsoft from January through August 2024. (Voroni)
95% – The percentage growth in “Administrative Staff” in US Public Schools since 2000, compared to 10% in teachers, and 5% in students. (America)
~50% – The portion of FEMA’s disaster budget that was spent in the first 8 days of FY25. (Politico)
78% – The percentage of NVIDIA employees who are now millionaires. (Special Situations Research)