Startups hoping to raise a nine-figure turn in the future had better tempered their ambition; venture capital funding events worth $100 million or more are disappearing – fast.
A few years ago, nine-figure venture capital funding events were common. So much so that during my Crunchbase News days, we started calling them “supergiant” towers to avoid having to specify their size. Hell, we actually published regular reports on towers worth a few hundred million or more until the volume made it unfeasible. Good time.
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Now, more than a year after the peak of the 2021 venture capital boom, it’s clear those days are behind us. And while it took much longer than expected to deflate the $100 million round bubble, if trends continue, nine-figure VC funding events will, once again, become sufficiently rare. to deserve our attention.
The fall of the $100 million round is an Icarian saga. PitchBook data collected by TechCrunch this morning tells a simple story: From a flat base of around 75 such funding events per quarter through 2019 and much of 2020, the rate at which investors in venture capitalists pumped capital into startups in nine-figure increments soared through 2021, only to then slump to previous levels in about the same time as it took to peak.
The data is clear: from 75 funding events of $100 million or more in the first quarter of 2019 to 426 in the fourth quarter of 2021, the pace of nine-digit venture capital deals has fallen to just 57 so far in the first. quarter of 2023.
Naturally, we will see the current quarterly tally increase over the next few weeks, but it will certainly end the first quarter below the 157 we saw in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Here is the chart of mega tower volume from the beginning of 2019 until today:
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