Greater Philadelphia startups continue to rake in massive amounts of venture capital funding.
Philadelphia-area startups raised $1.8 billion across 91 deals in the third quarter, bringing the total amount of capital raised in the region this year to $5.2 billion, according to the latest Pitchbook-NVCA Venture Monitor report.
If investments at this rate, the region will more than double the previous record of $2.7 billion set in 2019 before the end of the year.
Philadelphia is also close to eclipsing its record for the number of VC deals completed in a year. The region did 294 deals in the first nine months of 2021, putting it about 95% of the way to topping the record 309 deals completed in 2020.
Nationally, $82.8 billion in capital was deployed across 3,518 deals in the third quarter, bringing the total amount invested so far in 2021 to $238.7 billion. The size of deals for early- and late-stage capital keeps increasing and a record $49.5 billion in “mega-rounds,” or deals of more than $100 million, was invested in the third quarter. Mega-rounds have accounted for 57.2% of capital investment so far this year.
Philadelphia-area companies with notable investments in the third quarter include:
- Gopuff - Investors shelled out another $1 billion to the Philadelphia delivery startup, catapulting its valuation to $15 billion.
- Mainfactor - The Philadelphia e-commerce startup raised a $69 million seed round to acquire direct-to-consumer companies.
- iEcure - The Philadelphia gene editing company spun out of the University of Pennsylvania emerged from stealth mode in September and raised a $50 million round.
- NRx Pharmaceuticals - Radnor-based NRx, which developed a Covid-19 therapy, sold $30 million in stock to a group of investors.
- ZeroEyes - The AI-based firearm detection platform based in Conshohocken raised a $20.9 million Series A.
- Burro - The agtech startup raised a $10.9 million Series A round to grow its fleet of autonomous robots.
Smaller deals done in 3Q include $7.6 million for clinical intelligence firm Astarte Medical, $6 million for behavioral tech startup ForMotiv, $5 million for car wash startup EverWash, $4.3 million for medical device company Vesteck Inc. and $3.2 million for maternity care startup Cayaba Care.
PitchBook includes Reading as part of the Philadelphia region in its analysis, as well as Cecil County, Maryland.
Greater Philadelphia’s startup scene once again outpaced funding in VC hot spots like the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington combined area, the Austin-Round Rock region and the Denver-Aurora combined area. Philadelphia also outraised the Chicago-Naperville combined area for the first time this year — Chicago-area companies raised $1.4 billion in the third quarter, compared with $1.8 billion raised in Greater Philadelphia — but Chicago’s total funding in 2021 remains ahead with $5.5 billion raised so far.
Though there have been record amounts of capital raised this year, the Delta variant of Covid-19, supply chain disruptions, worker shortages and inflation could rain on the VC parade in the future. Federal policy — such as a decline in asset purchases by the Federal Reserve — could also impact investors’ behaviors, Pitchbook wrote in its analysis of the market.
“If there are any clouds on the horizon for the industry, they may come in the form of the evolving pandemic, as well as economic and policy uncertainty,” PitchBook wrote.
