The second quarter of this year might have been the best quarter Atlanta has seen for venture capital raised in recent years.
Atlanta area companies raised $649.94 million from 38 deals in Q2, according to a new PitchBook and National Venture Capital Association breakdown. That's an increase of nearly 381 percent from Q1, when metro area startups raised $170.61 million.
The capital raised this quarter is the highest documented for the city in recent years, according to the Pitchbook data, which includes deals from 2013 to 2019. The highest amount of capital raised in the metro area prior to this quarter was $580.73 million in 2017 Q3.
Last year, Atlanta saw 35 deals and $226.36 million in capital raised in the second quarter. The funds this quarter are nearly three times more than what Atlanta raised this time last year.
In 2018, investors invested around $1.15 billion into Georgia companies across 120 deals. If we continue this trend of outperforming last year's funds, we will surpass that number, easily.
Atlanta's top 9 deals of 2019 Q2, according to Pitchbook, are:
- Surterra Wellness – $100 million
- Dispersive Networks – $87 million
- SalesLoft – $70 million
- Maxex – $38 million
- FullStory – $32 million
- Evident – $20 million
- Clinigence – $19 million
- STORD – $12 million
- SoftWear Automation – $12 million
The most active Georgia venture firms listed in Pitchbook for the quarter were Noro-Moseley Partners, with a fund of $180 million, and BIP Capital, with a fund of $15 million.
Nationally, VC investments in the first half of the year hit $66 billion — on pace to hit the record levels we saw last year. But the story of Q2 was largely about exits. The second quarter of 2019 set a quarterly record with $138.3 billion in exit value — bringing the total for the first half of the year to $188.5 billion.
And that could foreshadow future investment.
“This strong exit activity has produced strong distributions for LPs, who are recycling that capital into new VC funds,” the report said.
While many people have projected a market correction or even a recession. The data points to continued growth and strong funding for startups.
“Robust exit activity continues to drive positive net cash flows to LPs and improve aggregate performance for the VC ecosystem,” John Gabbert, founder and CEO of PitchBook, said in a news release. “The unprecedented flood of newly liquid capital has already eclipsed every other annual exit value total, ensuring that 2019 will leave its mark as a pivotal year for the US VC industry.”
