Crunchbase data shows steep declines in Q4 start-up investments
Declines occurred in every category - from pre-seed to later stage.
Joanna Glasner of Crunchbase News writes in this article that “North American start-up investment fell sharply in the fourth quarter, closing out 2022 with funding far below the prior year’s record-setting levels. In total, investors put $36.1 billion to work across all stages in Q4, per Crunchbase data. That’s a whopping 63 percent decline from a year ago (a remarkably bubbly time for start-up funding) and a 10 percent drop from third-quarter 2022.”
She writes that the declines were sharpest at the late stage, as the shuttered initial public offerings market and shrinking tech valuations muted investor appetite for large follow-on rounds. However, funding was down both year-over-year (YoY) and quarter-over-quarter at every stage. Crunchbase data shows that $14.4 billion went into early stage rounds (Series A and B), a 59 percent decline from year-earlier levels and a 16 percent drop from Q3 tallies. It was also the lowest total of the past five quarters. At the seed, pre-seed and angel investment stages, investments totaled $3 billion, a decline of 37 percent YoY and a drop of 18 percent from the prior quarter.
