Chicago venture funding has shown no signs of slowing down in 2021.
The city's startups have raised $5.5 billion in VC funding through the first three quarters of 2021, according to data released Thursday by Pitchbook. That's about twice as much as what was raised in all of 2020, which was already a record high for Chicago tech companies.
This year's influx of capital has been paced by an increase in $100 million mega-funding rounds, which have minted around a dozen new "unicorn" startups valued at $1 billion or more. In total, 275 Chicago companies have received VC funding so far in 2021, according to Pitchbook.
Chicago's VC funding still falls well short of cities like New York, Boston and Los Angeles, which have so far raised $39 billion, $28 billion and $24 billion, respectively, and of course the Bay Area, which leads the way with $88 billion raised so far this year.
But Chicago is the next city behind those power players, outpacing metros like Philadelphia ($5.2 billion), Seattle ($5.1 billion), Washington, D.C. ($4.3 billion), Austin ($3.8 billion) and Denver ($3.5 billion).
Chicago has raised a full $3 billon more, and seen nearly 100 more deals made, than Miami, a city that's garnered buzz over the last year as the next tech hot spot.
It's an unprecedented amount of funding for Chicago, and it led ChicagoNext executive chairman Mark Tebbe to proclaim 2021 as "the absolute best year in Chicago tech" during last month's Chicago Venture Summit.
Some of 2021's biggest deals include $350 million for lab-grown meat startup Nature's Fynd, $200 million for insurance-tech startup Clearcover, and $100 million for celebrity shoutout app Cameo.
And the fourth quarter of this year has already gotten off to a hot start, with fintech startup Halo Investing's $100 million round, along with The Mom Project's $80 million Series C.
