The Funded: VCs are projected to invest $56.3B worldwide in Q1 — the lowest amount in nearly 6 years

It looks nearly certain that the venture industry will post its fifth-straight quarter of declining investment amounts and its fourth-straight drop in deals.

With just two weeks left in the first quarter, CB Insights projects venture outfits worldwide will invest about $56.3 billion in the period across 5,792 deals. That would mark the lowest quarterly funding amount in nearly six years and the fewest number of deals in a quarter since the end of 2016, according to the research firm's prior reports.

Venture investments peaked at $180.7 billion worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to CB's past reports. The number of deals globally topped out at 10,922 in the first quarter last year, according to a post from the firm on Thursday. Both have fallen steadily since.

In a sign of the times, Y Combinator under new CEO Gary Tan this week announced it won't raise another late-stage investment fund, preferring to focus instead on early-stage startups, where the investments are smaller and the valuations generally lower.

Things could get even worse with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. The institution was a key lender to venture-backed companies.

Over the last year, as startup valuations came under pressure amid the plunging stock market and the decrease in venture investments, SVB helped to prop them up by providing companies with financing that didn't require them to reevaluate their worth, as CB noted in a separate post. Without SVB actively providing such financing, more companies could see steep valuation cuts and some could go under or lay off staff, CB said.

The "impacts" of SVB's failure "will be significant," it said.

Here's a look at the Bay Area deals that were disclosed at the end of this week:

Fundings