The third quarter is in the books, and a new report by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association shows once again that more money is being distributed across fewer deals.
For example, 378 funding rounds were $50 million or more so far in 2018. That's more than the 292 deals of that size that closed altogether last year.
"This phenomenon hasn’t been limited to just the large late- and growth-stage deals—it’s been at every investment stage and across most sectors," the report says. "The result has been rising pre-money valuations, most notably for Series A financings, which have typically been less affected by frothy funding markets, but are now experiencing an unusually dramatic increase in valuations."
With three quarters of the year complete, 2018 deal value has already reached a decade high with $84.3 billion invested so far.
Austin VC Deal Flow
Austin, however, had a relatively quiet quarter, with fewer deals logged by PitchBook than the metro area has reported dating back to at least 2013.
Overall, 45 deals totaling $255.9 million of investment were logged in the Austin metro area in Q3 this year. That's down from Q2, which showed 62 deals at $414 million and Q1, which had 58 deals at $450.3 million invested. You have to go back to Q1 of 2017 to find a lower total amount invested -- $228.7 million.
So far this year, the Austin metro area has 163 venture capital deals. Last year, Austin had 232 deals. But that's more funding events than were logged in Washington, D.C. and San Diego -- and just a few shy of the 169 deals logged in Chicago.
PitchBook only logged one exit in the Austin area, and it didn't show an amount for that deal. That's the fewest exits since at least 2013, when PitchBook started tracking it.
Austin did, however, show stronger numbers for VC fundraising. The metro area reported nine VC fundraising events totaling $1.46 billion so far in 2018. That's up from $449 million last year and higher than any other previous year dating back to 2008, when the area had $2.1 billion reported.
Austin's Top 10
Here are the top 10 Austin deals laid out in the report.
- Vapor IO: $50 million round led by Berkshire Partners and Crown Castle International
- Kony: $26.8 million round led by ORIX Growth Capital
- TreeHouse: $20.2 million led by unknown investors
- MTPV: $17.9 Million round led by LakeBridge Capital
- ClearDATA: $15 million led by unknown investors
- data.world: $12 million round led by Workday Ventures, OurCrowd and The Associated Press
- Infinite.io: $11.7 million round led by Dougherty & Company, PV Ventures, Three Fish Capital, Equus Holdings and Chicago Ventures
- New Knowledge: $11 million led by GGV Capital and Lux Capital
- ScaleFactor: $10 million led by Canaan Partners, Citi Ventures, Flyover Capital, Next Coast Ventures, Capital Factory, Firebrand Ventures and Broadhaven Capital Partners
- Seismos: $9.9 million round led by unknown investors
Vapor IO's $50 million round was also the largest investment made in Texas during Q3 2018. The second largest went to OncoResponse, a Houston-based biotech company that raised $40 million. The third largest in Texas was Infrastructure Networks, a Houston wireless service provider that raised $27 million.
Other top deals included Smarter Sorting, RFCode, Factom, PrismHealthDX, Swivel, Visio, PLNAR Enterprise AR, HelloGbye, Caringo, Blink Idntity, Sunroom, Briggo, Cerberus Interactive, Alpha Nodus, Man Outfitters, Pani and Self Lender.
