Amounts were flat quarter over quarter but still up year over year. The pace of acquisitions increased in the first quarter, rising 26 percent quarter over quarter and 44 percent year over year. Sectors that saw the biggest increase year over year include administrative services, lending, and sales and marketing. Sectors that led for investments include health care, financial services, transportation, and commerce and shopping. Fully 79 percent of dollars at late stage is in rounds of $100 million and above this quarter, compared to 74 percent in the previous quarter and 63 percent in the first quarter of 2020. Late-stage funding and technology growth - private equity into venture-backed companies - grew the most in the first quarter of 2021, at 56 percent quarter over quarter and more than doubled at 122 percent year over year.Ī higher proportion of the growth in late-stage growth is in rounds above $100 million.
This record in early-stage funding was in part attributed to an increase in rounds over $100 million, but not solely.įunding counts are typically down for the most recent quarter due to the aforementioned data lags, but for this quarter already show an increase quarter over quarter, attesting to just how heated the market is for early-stage funding and signaling that more funding will come should these growth trends continue. But by the third quarter of last year, that trend had reversed and venture funding went on to record highs.Įarly-stage funding experienced a surge in the first quarter of 2021, with $35.5 billion in funding, a 45 percent quarter-over-quarter increase and a jump of 63 percent year over year. Funding counts trended down, but it’s worth keeping in mind that this stage of funding tends to be heavily influenced by data lags, so that number is likely to go up as more deals are added to the Crunchbase dataset over time: Often, we find as much as 40 percent of deals are added in the year after a quarter closes, and as much as 50 percent to 60 percent two years out.īack in the second quarter of 2020, we saw seed-stage funding counts dip, most likely as venture firms focused on supporting their portfolio companies through the emerging pandemic rather than seeking new investment opportunities.
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Seed funding held up in the first quarter of 2021, with $4.1 billion invested in seed-stage venture deals. The fourth-highest funding quarter was the third quarter of 2020, when funding reached $87 billion. The second quarter in 2018 was not far behind at $91 billion.
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To find the next-highest global funding quarter, one has to go back to the fourth quarter of 2018, when global funding reached $92 billion. The past three months mark a quarterly record for global VC investment. And following a year of pandemic-led growth for many technology startups, the acquisition markets are stronger than ever. Private companies have more avenues to go public, including via special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, which took off in 2020. Global funding last quarter hit an all-time high, marking the first single quarter to reach above $100 billion, according to Crunchbase data.Īlongside the investment boom, new unicorn startups - those private companies valued at $1 billion or more - were created at a rapid pace in the first quarter, with an average of close to two new unicorns per working day, well above all previous quarter counts.Īfter more than a year of a global pandemic, the S&P 500 is also at an all-time high. In the first quarter of 2021, global venture investments reached $125 billion, a 50 percent increase quarter over quarter and a whopping 94 percent increase year over year, Crunchbase data shows.
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