Useful Stats: Share of Annual U.S. Venture Capital Investment by State, 2005-2010

Since 2005, the distribution of U.S. venture capital (VC) investment has remained fairly steady, with California companies receiving about half of all venture dollars. California's share of total dollars reached its highest point in 2009, when the state's firms received 50.6 percent of all U.S. investment. While California's share decreased a bit in 2010, VC activity remains highly concentrated in a handful of states. Over the past five years, the top ten states for venture investment have represented about 85 percent of all U.S. venture activity. Since PricewaterhouseCoopers began tracking VC activity by state in 2005, the overall trend has been toward greater concentration in a few hotspots, particularly the Silicon Valley region.

The number of venture capital deals also is highly concentrated in California, though there has been a slight trend over the past five years toward greater geographic diversity. In 2005, California received 41.3 percent of all VC deals and the top ten states together received 80.4 percent of all deals. Five years later in 2010, California received 39.3 percent of VC deals and the top ten states received 78.9 percent of deals.

PricewaterhouseCoopers recently released their quarterly MoneyTree report on Q1 2011. Overall, U.S. VC dollars were up five percent over the previous quarter, reaching $5.9 billion, though deals fell 11 percent to 827. California increased its share of total U.S. investment in the first quarter, claiming 51.3 percent of all VC dollars. The state's share of deals, however, fell to 36.7 percent.

SSTI has prepared two tables: one showing each state's share of annual U.S. venture capital and another showing each state's share of venture deals from 2005 to 2010.

SSTI also prepared the following chart showing the distribution of venture capital investment dollars over the past five years.

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