Global venture capital funding in the first half of 2021 shattered records as more than $288 billion was invested worldwide, Crunchbase numbers show. That’s up by just under $110 billion compared to the previous half-year record that was just set in the second half of 2020.
New funding records
A greater number of those venture-backed companies have gone public valued above $10 billion so far this year — just half-way in — than in all of 2020. And already this year, another 250 companies have joined the Crunchbase Unicorn Board, compared to 161 new unicorns for the whole of 2020.
The backdrop for all of this activity in the venture ecosystem is strong first-quarter earnings for leading technology stocks as countries slowly emerge from the pandemic. On July 2, both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite index hit all-time highs.
“In the past 12 months, there has been a cavalcade of exits that in almost any year, prior to the last few, would have been among the largest exits in venture history by absolute dollars,” even if adjusted for inflation, said Ben Savage of Clocktower Technology Ventures, a Santa Monica-based fintech venture investor that also manages separate public market funds.
This increase in large exits in the past five years signifies a real change in the private markets, according to Savage. Larger institutional allocators are recognizing this, “which leads to more capital flowing into funds that invest in private companies, and directly into private companies,” allowing companies to stay private and creating a tremendous amount of value.
Crunchbase numbers show that global venture funding in the first half of 2021 surged 61 percent compared to the prior peak of $179 billion in the second half of 2020. That’s up 95 percent compared with the first half of 2020, when venture investors deployed $148 billion globally.
Growth and PE investors as a cohort have invested more dollars in rounds they led this year so far compared to the whole of 2020. The same can be said for venture investors, as well, by the half-year mark.
All told, 17 companies have raised rounds above a billion dollars through the first half of this year, including Northvolt, Waymo and Celonis.
Notably, Istanbul-based delivery company Getir raised its Series B, C and D all in a six-month period totaling $983 million across these three subsequent funding rounds that valued the company from $850 million for its Series B to $7.5 billion in the Series D.
Record funding was invested at every stage in the first half of this year. Late-stage funding peaked the most, more than doubling year over year, per Crunchbase numbers. Early-stage funding grew more than 60 percent over the prior two half-year time-frames and seed funding gained 40 percent year over year.
Increased investing pace
Growth equity investors Tiger Global Management and Insight Partners racked up the most portfolio companies for the first half of the year, according to Crunchbase data.
A long list of growth equity investors also makes up the roster of firms leading or co-leading deals with the largest amounts committed to private companies.
Tiger Global tops that list, followed by SoftBank Vision Fund, Insight Partners, Coatue, Silver Lake, Fidelity, D1 Capital Partners and T. Rowe Price by funding amounts led or co-led.
Sequoia Capital — notably, the only venture firm listed in the top 10 — is followed by GIC, Goldman Sachs, Hillhouse Capital, General Catalyst and DST Global. Across the 390 deals these funds led, only 26 deals had a co-lead among these 14 investors.
Credit: @crunchbase News
