Despite the tumultuous nature of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, venture capital fundraising over just the last nine months has skyrocketed, blowing 2020’s record-breaking numbers out of the water. And, once again, NYC has proven itself to be a dominant force in the nation’s tech startup ecosystem.
According to the Q3 2021 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor published late last week, $82.8 billion in capital was deployed across more than 3,500 deals last quarter, following a similarly strong performance during Q1 and Q2. This means a total of $238.7 billion has been invested in 2021 so far.
While investment activity was certainly healthy across the angel, seed and early stages, there has also been an explosion of mega-rounds (deals totaling $100 million or more). More than 200 of these deals were closed in Q3 alone, bringing the total invested in mega-rounds so far this year to $136.5 billion — nearly double the record $76.7 billion invested in 2020.
Of course, if we zoom in, these larger trends were mirrored in NYC too, solidifying this city as a leading tech hub. All told, New York has had the second-most VC deals in 2021 so far (following Silicon Valley), amounting to nearly $40 billion — a 153 percent increase from last year. And a good chunk of this money was raised through some impressive recent mega-rounds.
For instance, Articulate Global, a longtime leader in the e-learning and training space, kicked off Q3 with an eye-watering $1.5 billion Series A round, valuing the company at $3.75 billion. Several other buzzy startups like data management software provider Dataiku, short-term rental marketplace Blueground, and women’s health startup Maven raised mega-rounds of their own last quarter, too. In fact, Maven hit a $1 billion valuation thanks to its recent $110 million Series D, making it one of a growing number of women-led unicorns — and the only one in the U.S. focused on women and family health.
That brings us to another area NYC dominates, according to PitchBook: women-founded companies. The report found that, nationwide, capital investments in women-founded companies hit record highs this year, totaling nearly $40 billion. And women founded-businesses have reportedly raised more money in New York than any other metro area, totaling $3.4 billion across 457 deals as of September. Some recent notable rounds on this front include Andela’s $200 million investment led by SoftBank, and Alloy’s $100 million Series C — both of which brought these companies’ respective valuations to north of $1 billion.
Looking ahead, NYC shows no signs of slowing down as 2021 draws to a close. The city is a hotbed to some of the buzziest industries today, including proptech, e-commerce, fintech and healthtech, which means this momentum will likely carry into 2022.
