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Methodology
This board tracks announced venture funding deals of $100 million or more in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies.
Although most of the largest funding rounds of 2023 and 2024 are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as deals are added to the Crunchbase dataset.
We consider VC funding deals to be both venture capital investment in private companies as well as private equity and growth rounds into companies that have previously raised venture funding.
What is venture capital funding?
Venture capital is a type of private equity typically invested into emerging startup companies that investors believe have high growth potential and will deliver outsized returns.
In exchange for equity stakes in the companies, venture capital firms and other investors provide capital to private companies that they believe have the potential for successful exits when they eventually go public or are acquired at a premium.
A VC funding deal typically has one or two lead investors, with other investment firms participating in the round by providing smaller stakes.
Where are funding deals for the Crunchbase Megadeals Board sourced from?
Crunchbase VC funding data comes from a variety of sources, including an active community of contributors, more than 4,000 global investment firms that submit deal data to Crunchbase, startup and venture capital news sources, and an in-house data team.
If you believe a U.S.-based startup funding deal of $100 million or more is missing from this page, please contact support@crunchbase.com.
Read more about where Crunchbase sources its data.
What is a venture-funded startup?
Venture-funded startups are private companies that have received funding from venture capitalists.
These companies can range from very small, early-stage startups looking for seed-round funding, to large unicorn companies (private companies with a valuation of $1 billion-plus) that are on the verge of going public or being acquired.
Most venture-funded startups are in the technology industry, due to the sector’s potential for fast growth and outsized returns for investors. But companies in other industries such as retail and consumer goods also receive VC funding.
What are the stages of VC funding?
There are several stages of venture funding, starting with angel or pre-seed funding to the very youngest startups and ending with later-stage funding to established, pre-IPO startups.
- Angel: An angel round is typically a small round designed to get a new company off the ground. Investors in an angel round include individual angel investors, angel investor groups, friends and family.
- Pre-seed: A pre-seed round is a pre-institutional seed round that either has no institutional investors or is a very low amount, often below $1 million.
- Seed: Seed rounds are among the first rounds of funding a company will receive, generally while it is young and working to gain traction. Round sizes typically range between $1 million and $3 million, though larger seed rounds have become more common in recent years. A seed round typically comes after an angel round (if applicable) and before a company’s Series A round.
- Series A and Series B: These are funding rounds for earlier-stage companies and range on average between $5 million and $30 million.
- Series C and onward: For later-stage and more-established companies, these rounds are usually at least $20 million, but are often much larger.
Other sources of private-company funding include private equity or growth funding, debt financing and crowdfunding.
Read more about the different types of funding rounds and how they are classified in Crunchbase.
Which startups raised the most venture funding in 2022?
The largest venture funding deal to a U.S.-based startup in 2022 went to Epic Games, maker of the Fortnite video game series, with a $2 billion investment.
That deal was followed by SpaceX, an aviation and aerospace company, and Lineage Logistics, a warehousing and logistics company, which each raised $1.7 billion.
Palmer Luckey’s defense tech startup Anduril, and sports merchandise manufacturer and retailer Fanatics raised $1.5 billion apiece, and GM-backed autonomous car developer Cruise got $1.35 billion in a corporate round.
Outside of the U.S., the largest venture funding deals in 2022 went to Denmark-based energy trading house Danske Commodities ($3.7 billion); China-based electric-vehicle maker GAC Aion New Energy Automobile ($2.5 billion), and India’s Viacom18 Digital Ventures, an entertainment network, ($1.8 billion).
See the full list of the largest funding rounds of 2022.
What are the largest VC funding deals of all time?
How much venture capital was invested in 2022?
Global venture funding in 2022 was $445 billion, a 35% decline year over year from the $681 billion invested in 2021, according to Crunchbase data.
Read our 2022 global funding report for more.
Was 2021 a record year for venture capital investment?
Yes, 2021 was a record year for global VC investment. More than $681 billion was invested in startups around the world in 2021, Crunchbase data shows.
Read our 2021 global funding report for more.
Is VC funding slowing down?
Is VC funding drying up?
Venture capital has not dried up. While venture capitalists aren’t investing as much of their capital as they were during the investment boom of 2021, investors still have plenty of capital available to deploy.
Venture investors had as much as $580 billion at their disposal at the end of 2022, but seem to be holding on to much of that cash.
However, there were some substantial funding deals made in the first quarter of 2023 as well as in the first half of Q2. It is believed that many late-stage venture capitalists are waiting for the IPO window to show more signs of life before making investments in ready-to-exit startups.
Which venture capital firms have invested in the most startups so far in 2023?
What are VCs looking for in 2023?
In 2023, VCs are looking to invest in promising startups that are well-positioned in growing sectors or to perform well when the public markets reopen.
Seed and early-stage funding took the lead in the total number of deals closed in the first quarter of 2023, with artificial intelligence taking in about 19% of the amount raised globally. AI-sector startups that raised seed rounds in Q1 include large language models company Fixie.ai, code platform CodiumAI and biotech MoleculeMind.
Late-stage and technology growth funding startups led all stages in dollar amounts in Q1 2023, raising $43 billion total. This is in large part due to the billions invested in ChatGPT designer OpenAI ($10 billion from Microsoft in a corporate round), and online payment startup Stripe’s $600 million Series H. Those two deals combined accounted for 22% of all venture capital raised, and 38% of late-stage financings in the first quarter of 2023.
Halfway through the second quarter of 2023, very large venture capital deals seem to have picked up some steam, with eight U.S.-based startups raising $100 million-plus rounds in a single week in mid-May.
What are the leading sectors for venture funding?
Financial services, or fintech, led venture investment in both 2021 and 2022. Health care followed as the leading sector for VC investment in 2022.
Which companies are unicorn startups as of the start of 2023?
There are more than 1,400 private companies valued as unicorn startups with valuations of $1 billion or more as of early 2023. They include ByteDance, fintech Ant Group, SpaceX, fashion and lifestyle e-retailer Shein, Stripe and e-commerce payment solutions platform Klarna.
Where can I find all of Crunchbase’s venture capital funding news?
All of our VC startup funding news and coverage of venture capital trends in 2023 can be found here. Articles about large deals and VC funding trends are also added to the current page as soon as they are published.