Biggest venture capital Q1 in 15 years as US$13.4bn invested

20 Apr 2015

The US has just seen the biggest Q1 venture capital investment spree in 15 years with some US$13.4bn invested in 1,020 deals.

In what is the biggest funding quarter since the first quarter of 2000 – when the dot.com bubble of the day burst – investors threw 26pc more money into deals compared with the first quarter of 2014.

The investment figures were included in the MoneyTree report provided by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association using data from Thomson Reuters.

Some 12 deals during the quarter passed the US$100m mark.

One-third of deals were late-stage funding, going into rounds with unicorns like Slack and Uber.

Software start-ups attracted 42pc of the venture capital spend in the same quarter, up 21pc on Q1 of last year.

The next biggest sector for deals was biotech, with US$1.7bn going into 124 deals.

Digital dollar image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com