venture capital

Founded in 2015, venture-backed aerospace firm, Relativity Space, is poised to disrupt the rocket manufacturing and launch markets as it secures long-term contracts at NASA’s Stennis and Kennedy Space Centers. Relativity is reimagining the process to iterate and scale rockets quickly, relying on its revolutionary “Stargate” metal 3D printer and new autonomous facilities to build and launch rockets in days rather than years. The Mississippi Development Authority supplied the cost reimbursement and tax incentive package that, combined with a $59 million infrastructure investment from Relativity, enabled the firm to move into a 220,000 square foot facility, unused for the last 20 years, in southern Mississippi.

The trend of fewer, larger deals that emerged over the past few years continued through the first quarter of 2019, according to newly released data from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. U.S. activity in the quarter included $32.6 billion of capital investment on 1,853 deals, making it the second-highest quarterly capital investment total in the last decade. The latest edition of Venture Monitor also features a new dataset on investment in female-founded companies, which accounted for 2.2 percent of total VC deal value and 5.5 percent of total VC deal count in the first quarter. The report notes that foreign investment and immigration are two major policy issues that will be critical to how 2019 shapes up.

While the overall Chinese economy may be facing a slowdown, the venture capital (VC) market continues to report strong growth and became the second largest VC market by total capital invested in 2018, according to a new report from PitchBook. The report, Venture Capital in China, highlights the growing prominence of Chinese startup capital with nearly 30 percent of global VC directed into Chinese startups in 2018. PitchBook analysts contend that the Chinese VC market should continue to increase in prominence as Chinese startups activity matures and more foreign and domestic investors look to benefit from the country’s massive market and rapid rates of innovation. 

Both female-founded startups and female investors have seen slow progress over the past 10 years, and still face an uphill battle for equality in the venture capital industry. While the deal count for companies founded solely by women has more than quadrupled since 2008, the share of venture dollar invested has remained nearly flat, hovering around 2.0 percent over the same time, according to PitchBook. Similarly, only 10 percent of VC ‘decision-makers’ are women, up from 5.7 percent in 2016.

Over the six-year period from 2013 to 2018, as total venture capital investments nearly tripled, growing from $47.5 billion in 2013 to nearly $131 billion in 2014, the number of deals increased by just 13.5 percent according to new data from the NVCA-PitchBook Venture Capital Monitor. The $131 billion in total VC investments in 2018 is the largest amount since PitchBook began tracking the data in 2006 and the first year since the height of the dot-com boom that annual capital investment eclipsed $100 billion. Last week, SSTI wrote how the VC industry was shaped by concentration including both geographic concentration and increases in mega-rounds/funds in 2018.

NVCA and PitchBook released Venture Monitor 3Q 2018 this week. The highlight data point in the report is that total U.S. venture capital investment in 2018 is on pace to break $100 billion for the year — and, in fact, to break $110 billion. At the same time, deal volume is on pace to be at the lowest level since 2012, with just 6,583 deals reported to date in 2018. With so much of the macro VC trends driven by mega deals to the latest-stage companies, we dug into the data at the earliest stages of equity investment: accelerators/incubators, angel, and seed financings.

The Angel Capital Association is piloting a new report on the factors that influence successful angel investing and the startups that angels support.  The initial Angel Funders Report covers 2017 data from 26 angel groups and provides new insights for one year of investments. Some of the report’s key findings include:

Inclusive workforce development, downtown revitalization, and an influx of funds for venture capital are among the proposals in an economic development strategy unveiled by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy earlier this week. In an effort to focus on bottom-up development rather than a package of tax incentive programs favoring big businesses, the strategy seeks to build the nation’s “most diverse and inclusive innovation economy.”

After considerable growth in the number of startups raising a first round of venture capital financing between 2009 and 2014, there has been a geographically widespread contraction, according to new research from Ian Hathaway at the Center of American Entrepreneurship, a D.C. based advocacy group. In America’s Rising Startup Communities, Hathaway explores the geography of first venture capital financing across U.S. metropolitan areas over the last eight years, finding that just 10 metro areas account for more than two-thirds of all first financings. From 2009 to 2017, the number of startups receiving a first financing increased by 84 percent, and more than one-third of regions saw an increase in deals.

For the first time, the Chinese venture capital (VC) market has surpassed the U.S. VC market in total dollars invested in Q2 of 2018, according to Crunchbase. Driven by mega rounds and strong corporate VC, Chinese startups were able to raise more VC money in Q2’18 than their American counterparts. The strong Q2 for Chinese’s firms was driven by a very strong April. Chinese companies attracted approximately $15.6 billion that month. In comparison, U.S. companies attracted an average of U.S. $9.4 billion per month in Q1’18. In total, Chinese firms attracted approximately 47 percent of all reported VC dollars invested in Q2’18. If this trend continues, 2018 may become the year of the Chinese VC market.