When it comes to making venture deals, Atlanta dominated the South in transactions made from 2017 through mid-March 2018, according to Crunchbase.
Within the last 12 months, the city's startups made a whopping 154 deals, raising $1.065 billion in venture capital. Compare that to other southern cities, such as Raleigh at 125, Dallas at 112 and Nashville at 39 deals, Atlanta is showing that the last year has been pretty strong for local tech companies.
This momentum is anything but new. Several Atlanta startups have raised huge VC rounds in recent years to help position the city as the startup capital of the South.
For some perspective, we used Crunchbase Pro to find the seven Atlanta startups that have raised more than $100 million in funding in their lifetime:
• Kabbage, a FinTech company that connects small businesses with capital they need, is sitting pretty at $1.6 billion in total funding acquired since its debut on the Atlanta credit scene in 2009. Kabbage was recently in the news after the lending startup announced that, in the wake of the Parkland shooting, it would stop processing loans to assault-style weapons manufacturers.
• Greensky, a consumer lending company which offers paperless solutions and financial services to businesses, secured a total of $350 million in funding in just two rounds.
• Rubicon Global, a recycling and waste management startup better known as the "Uber for Recycling" and one of the city's few unicorn's, raised $196 million since its founding in 2008. We took a look around Rubicon's Buckhead office earlier this month and learned how their setup reflects their mission.
• T5 Data Centers owns and facilitates data centers across the continent since its founding in 2008. The company has raised $183 million in funding from two rounds in 2013 and 2016.
• Pindrop, a privately held cloud computing and fraud protection firm specializing in detecting voice calls, raised $80.8 million in their last funding round in 2016, bringing their total funding raised to $122.8 million. Recently introduced legislation in Georgia meant to crack down on internet hackers could criminalize startups like Pindrop.
• Ionic Security, a cybersecurity startup once known as Social Fortress, protects data and intellectual property with cloud services. The company has accumulated $122.4 million and is backed by leading venture firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures, TechOperators and ff VC. The same bill we mentioned above with Pindrop could also pose a potential threat to Ionic Security.
• PrimeRevenue operates a cloud-based financial supply chain for customers. Founded in 2003, it's acquired $115.6 million in funding.
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