Tech had a lot to celebrate in 2018. Startup deal values climbed a decade-high level. About 39 'unicorn' companies raised a total of $8 billion as of October 2018. Not only unicorns, but deal value for companies receiving their initial rounds of VC funding also reached record levels.
In Boston too, we had an eventful year with jam-packed activity. Notably, Amazon's two local acquisitions of PillPack and Sqrrl, the company's HQ2 news, Apple announcing jobs.
So what's in store for 2019? Pitchbook's 'Emerging Technology Outlook' report lays out some predictions about fintech and mobility:
- "We expect a secular shift away from pure-play shared mobility applications toward bundled mobility-as-a-service (MaaS)."
The report says that we will see an increased interest from ridesharing companies, automakers to invest in micro-mobility and last mile mobility, which means more M&A activity is likely to happen. This trend might already be underway with ridesharing major Lyft acquiring bike-sharing network Motivate and launching Lyft Bikes. Shortly after, reports of Uber looking into buying Bird and Lime Bikes emerged.
- Autonomous vehicle partnerships and M&A activity will remain elevated.
Pitchbook also predicted more activity in autonomous vehicle partnerships but also cautioned that computational challenges will remain a hindrance to robust commercialization. In Massachusetts, however, there is accelerated activity in the autonomous vehicle technology. In 2018, two major AV-tech startups emerged out of stealth in the Boston-area. Earlier in the year, MIT self-driving car startup NuTonomy received city officials permission to expand testing of its cars.
- We expect technology conglomerates to make a grand entrance into the financial services sector via the introduction of large-scale financial products, major acquisitions or profound partnerships.
When it comes to fintech, Pitchbook signaled the entrance of tech giants leading to increased consolidation and partnerships. This year, we already witnessed this trend with Boston-based fintech startup LearnLux raising $2 million from Salesforce's Marc Benioff. 2018 was a good year for fintech startups in Boston -- Cambridge-based Vestigo Ventures closed its $60M fund to invest in early-stage fintech startups, MassChallenge revealed its first ever fintech cohort and in a first, State Street partnered with Cambridge-based fintech AI startup Kensho to launch an ETF tracking companies in space and deep-sea exploration space.
