Startup I want to grow A future 9-figure round would have been perfect to temper their ambitions. $100M+ venture funding events are rapidly disappearing.
A few years ago, nine-figure venture funding events were the norm. So in the Crunchbase News era, we started calling it the “super-huge” round so as not to need to spell out the size. Hell, we actually ran regular reports of rounds worth hundreds of millions or more until the sheer amount was unrealistic. Good times.
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More than a year after the peak of the 2021 venture boom, it’s clear that those days are over. And while it took much longer than expected to deflate the $100 million round bubble, if the trend continues, 9-figure venture funding events will once again become rare enough to attract attention. I guess.
It’s Ikaria’s story that the $100 million round went unnoticed. The PitchBook data TechCrunch gathered this morning is a simple story: From 2019 through most of 2020, there were a steady stream of about 75 fundraising events per quarter, with 9 The pace of funding startups in digit chunks has exploded into 2021. It just crashes back to the previous level in about the same amount of time it took to peak.
From 75 fundraising events of $100 million or more in Q1 2019 to 426 in Q4 2021, the data is clear.
Unsurprisingly, the current quarterly tally will rise in the coming weeks, but it is certain to close Q1 below the 157 seen in Q4 2022.
Here is a chart of mega round trading volume from early 2019 to today:
