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But that’s boring. What you want is the . And we have just that for you.

What follows is just the charts and none of the talking. So if you wanted to get into the grits without dealing with the faff, enjoy:

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Crunchbase News has explored just how much the region has changed over the past few quarters and how much of that growth can be credited to China—a country boasting three of the top five most valuable private companies in the world.

Asia-Pacific Investment Roundup

On a year-over-year basis, deal volume in the Asia-Pacific region experienced a 14 percent jump in total known rounds, according to Crunchbase data. This speaks to a long-term trend of Asia-Pacific investors increasingly willing to pump capital into the region’s growing startup ecosystem.

In looking at the data on a quarter-over-quarter basis, deal volume in the Asia-Pacific region decreased by roughly 11 percent. That reduction, combined with strong growth in dollar volume (as shown in the chart below), indicates the prevalence of large late-stage deals for startups in the region.

Crunchbase data show that startups in the Asia-Pacific region attracted $72 billion in the first half of 2018, with $43 billion in venture capital funding in Q2 2018 alone. To put the past year into perspective, dollar volume has grown by over 260 percent. Ant Financial’s latest round amounted to more than the entirety of venture capital that was directed to startups in the Asia-Pacific in Q2 2017.

As we anticipated, late-stage deals took up the bulk of that funding volume. And while the Ant Financial deal accounted for a significant part of the growth in deal volume from Q1 to Q2, deal sizes were still relatively large overall. In fact, the average size of late-stage deals of known size in Q2 2018 amounted to about $211 million compared to roughly $104 million in Q1. In Mainland China alone, that average size doubles to $426 million. Of course, as that difference illustrates, China has a huge influence on deal growth in the overall Asia-Pacific region

How Much Does China Matter, Really?

The increase in capital toward startups in the Asia-Pacific was often directed to startups in China. In fact, according to Crunchbase, China accounted for a full 87 percent of venture deals in the Asia-Pacific and nearly two-thirds of the total known deal volume in Q2 2018.

Taking Mainland China Out Of The Mix

With about two-thirds of the dollar volume directed toward startups in Mainland China, it’s difficult to make determinations about the state of venture capital in other regions of the Asia-Pacific.

According to Crunchbase data, deal volume in the Asia-Pacific, outside of Mainland China, decreased by nearly eight percent quarter-over-quarter with about 360 reported deals in Q2 2018. Late and seed-stage deals decreased slightly from Q1. The volume of early-stage deals remained constant.

Rounds for startups based in Singapore and India made up about 81 percent of the late-stage deal volume for Asia-Pacific countries. Deals for startups in India made up nearly 47 percent of all reported seed rounds, 41 percent of all early-stage deals, and 39 percent of all late-stage deals for all Asia-Pacific countries outside of Mainland China. Singapore followed India in carrying 16 percent of all seed deals, 18 percent of all early-stage deals, and 11 percent of all late-stage deals.

Dollar volume in Q2 2018 was about 63 percent lower than that of 2018, with early, late, and seed-stage deals bringing in about $2 billion in known venture capital funding.  However, Q2 2018 was not completely devoid of large late-stage deals. In Singapore, Didi Chuxing and Softbank-backed Grab raised another in venture funding in a deal with Toyota. The deal brought the startup’s valuation up to $10 billion. Another notable company, social streaming service , made its mark in Q2 2018 with a round led by China-based social gaming portal .

India’s late-stage deals were relatively smaller but more numerous than that of Singapore. The country’s largest reported deal was a for from Softbank and Alibaba. The e-commerce startup is valued at $1.5 billion. Another startup, Bangalore-based food delivery company Swiggy, scored a investment from and . Notably, Mainland China-based online-to-offline service heavyweight also participated in the round.

It’s clear that some companies outside of Mainland China in the Asia-Pacific have piqued the interest of VCs and corporate investors alike. In fact, there is some evidence that the interest in Southeast Asia has trickled down into more early-stage deals.

Southeast Asia Meets Early Stage Growth

In Southeast Asian countries, seed and early-stage dollar volume increased on a quarter-over-quarter and yearly basis. Dollar volume for late-stage deals decreased slightly.

Investors have funneled billions of dollars into startups like Grab, Carousell, and Go-Jek over the past couple of years. Interest in those late-stage startups may have boosted the growth of early and seed-stage startups. , General Partner at 500 Durians, the Singapore chapter of 500 Startups, told Crunchbase News that he thinks this is the case.

“The interest in early-stage investing has been driven largely by the prominence of local success stories like Grab, Carousell, and Bukalapak,” Harnal told Crunchbase News in an email. “A desire to participate in and profit from the next wave of those companies has enticed businesspeople, professionals and high-net-worth individuals with discretionary capital to take a punt in nascent startups.” He added that early-stage investing is becoming more accessible and formalized through angel networks; furthermore, the investment climate is becoming more competitive.

“These developments have made the ecosystem more robust and have also increased the competitiveness for the best deals significantly,” Harnal noted. “In fact, a number of venture capital firms that previously invested at pre-seed and seed in the region have moved to Series A. Having a strong brand, reputation, network, and expertise has become more critical than ever to ensure that the best founders have you top of mind and come to you for investment.”

500 Durians, a seed and early-stage investor itself, committed $21 million to online consumer-to-consumer marketplace ’s latest . It is the largest deal by a 500 startups chapter ever, according to Harnal.

“We had originally invested in Carousell during their seed round in 2013 from our Southeast Asia-focused 500 Durians Fund,” Harnal wrote. “We kept close tabs on the company’s performance and watched it grow into one of the most dominant consumer platforms in the region.”

Competitiveness and the desire to invest in or become the next big success story in Southeast Asia is potentially driving more entrepreneurial and technical talent to the region.

Methodology:

Companies considered in this section only include those that have listed geographical locations on Crunchbase. Companies in the Asia Pacific include Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, South Korea, North Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Bhutan, Bangladesh, British Indian Ocean Territory, Indonesia, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Countries in Southeast Asia include members of the .

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Using projected data provided by Crunchbase, Crunchbase News reported that Q2 2018 marks new post-Dot Com highs for both VC deal and dollar volume around the world, the latter of which was propelled by a surge in late-stage deals (Series C and above).

The chart below plots growth in projected late-stage deal and dollar volume over time.

This remarkable growth in dollar volume – more than doubling since the same period in 2017 – has lead to the late-stage deal market looming large over the venture landscape. For perspective, late-stage rounds accounted for about 42 percent of dollar volume in Q2 2017, but it made up 64 percent of dollar volume in Q2 2018.

To be clear, this isn’t a rising tide raising all ships. Worldwide, late-stage venture activity is intensifying at a more rapid clip than other venture funding stages, squeezing other stages toward the margins. We can see this happening in the chart below:

Two things are happening at once here: on one side, private equity deals with previously venture-backed companies—what we call “Tech Growth”—account for less of the action; on the other side of the spectrum, angels, seed investors, and writers of Series A and Series B checks account for less of the total dollar volume over time.

As it happens, in Q2 seed and early-stage venture—despite reaching post-Dot Com highs in absolute terms—make up for a smaller percent of total dollar volume than in any quarter since at least Q3 2013, the last records we had readily available.

In the second quarter, seed and early-stage venture lost ground in relative terms, making up a smaller percent of total dollar volume than in any quarter since at least Q3 2013, the last for which records were available.

Private equity, on the other hand, is getting squeezed out because a certain class of venture capital firms are able to invest more capital into late-stage venture deals.

Venture capital shops – especially the well-established – are raising ever-larger funds at an increasing pace. Just as an example, by Tuesday of this week, three VC firms (, , and ) announced $4 billion in fresh powder across six new funds.

In part, this pivot to larger funds is a strategic countermeasure against SoftBank and its behemoth  The fund  (sometimes as the sole investor) late-stage venture capital rounds sized in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

In order to compete with SoftBank for the best deals, many VC firms are raising big new funds. Capital pools earmarked for late-stage deals are growing deeper. Sequoia Capital’s third Global Growth Fund is expected to top out at $8 billion, whereas its second (announced in June 2017) was a comparatively paltry $2 billion.

So is there an end in sight for all this late-stage largesse? For the time being, not really.

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A Crunchbase tally of projected investment totals and round counts for Q2 of 2018 shows both achieving their most buoyant levels in years.

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Everything was up, from seed-stage deals to growth rounds. Exits were up, too, including both the biggest venture-backed M&A deal in years and a long lineup of IPOs. U.S. venture capital firms also hauled in some of the biggest new funds ever, providing a plentiful supply of cash for future deals.

Below, we break down the numbers in greater detail, focusing on Q2 investment and round totals, stage-by-stage performance, largest rounds, and biggest exits.

Investment Totals

Investors put $33.1 billion to work across all stages for U.S. and Canadian startups over the course of the just-ended quarter. That’s an increase of 16 percent from Q1 of 2018 and a whopping 43 percent increase from Q2 of 2017.

These appear to be the highest numbers since the 2008 financial crisis, according to Crunchbase records. It’s likely that these are also the largest tallies since the dot-com bubble, though our records do not go back far enough to definitively validate this.

In the chart below, we look at how the numbers compare over the last five quarters for seed-stage through technology growth investment:

Round Counts

Now let’s turn to round counts. Those look to be up in the just-ended quarter, but not nearly as much as investment totals.

Crunchbase projects that investors backed 3,017 funding rounds across all stages in Q2 of this year. That’s up 6 percent from Q1 and up 3 percent from Q2 of 2017.

In the chart below, we look at round counts compare over the past five quarters:

As seen above, the number of startup funding deals across all stages was above or roughly on par with the prior quarter.

Early-stage round counts were also up nearly a fifth from the prior quarter, although still a bit below year-ago levels.

With investors putting a lot more money to work across slightly more deals, average round sizes ballooned. Across all stages, the average size of reported rounds rose by 30 percent or more from year-ago levels.

Late Stage and Growth Stage

Late-stage and technology growth rounds showed the sharpest gains in total investment as venture backers put even more money into already well-capitalized startups.

Of all stages, the volatile technology growth category was up the most. For Q2, investors put $3.12 billion to work in tech-growth deals, up from $1.23 billion in Q1. Round counts also surged, with 36 deals in Q2, up 33 percent from Q1.

It should be noted that tech growth is the category with the fewest and biggest rounds, so it’s common to see wide quarterly variance. That said, there were a high number of big rounds, with large funding recipients including nuptial planning site , home products maker , and online petcare network Rover.

Late-stage dealmaking, a much bigger category than tech category, also rose sharply. Investment at this stage was up more than 50 percent from year-ago levels, driven by a handful of supergiant rounds.

In the chart below, we look at late-stage funding over the past five quarters. Investment totals show a pattern of steady gains:

Where did all the money go? scored the largest late-stage round of the quarter, securing $600 million in late June.

A big chunk also went to scooter startups, which haven’t been around long but still managed drive up funding totals. , founded just last year, swooped away with $300 million in Series C funding to expand its scooter network. Meanwhile rival waited till just after the quarter’s end to raise its $335 million Series C, after raising a $70 million B round in February.

In the chart below, we lay out the largest late-stage rounds of the quarter:

Early Stage

Early-stage companies (Series A and B) also soaked up more capital. Crunchbase projects that investors poured $10.65 billion into early-stage rounds in Q2 of 2018. That’s just a bit above Q1 and the highest total in the past five quarters.

In the chart below, we provide more specifics about round counts and investment totals for the past five quarters:

The median early stage round in just-ended quarter was around $8 million. However, there were some really enormous deals in the mix, dominated by biotech but also encompassing a broad range of other sectors.

Below, we look at the five largest Series A and B rounds.

It should be noted that big early-stage rounds often go to companies with comparatively mature technologies. For instance, , the largest Series A recipient, is working on to advance cancer immunology work that originated at Pfizer. , the second-largest Series A, has been around for close to 15 years, but it hadn’t previously raised a venture round.

Seed

A few quarters ago, we were writing a lot of stories about a marked pullback in seed-stage activity and what it could portend for the broader startup ecosystem.

Looking at the latest Q2 numbers, it seems fair to say we are no longer seeing a slowdown. True, seed investment is not up as much from year-ago levels as late stage. However, it is nonetheless on the rise.

Crunchbase projects that investors put about $1.42 billion in seed-stage deals in Q2 of 2018, a smidge above from the prior quarter and up about 15 percent from year-ago levels. We break down round counts and investment totals for the past five quarter in the chart below.

Exits

By this point, we’ve made it clear that investors spent lots of money backing new startups this past quarter. But did they also manage to generate returns from the old startups in their portfolios?

It’s hard to answer definitively. Acquisition prices are often undisclosed and newly public shares can be quite volatile. Based on the information we do have, it’s reasonable to conclude that Q2 was a very good quarter for exits, including both M&A deals and IPOs.

First, let’s talk about IPOs. There were a lot of them—including at least 27 venture-backed companies based in the U.S. Of those, 16 were in the pharma or healthcare space, while the other 11 could be loosely categorized as tech.

There were some big offerings in the mix. After 15 years as a private company, e-signature pioneer finally went public this spring, securing a recent valuation of over $8 billion. , another older startup that provides training software, went public and is now valued over $3 billion. And , a provider of fast loans, went public in May and is now valued at over $4 billion.

M&A numbers were pretty big, too, thanks in large to part to Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of in June. That deal alone was the largest purchase of a private, venture-backed company in years. Yet it also came amid a broader upward trend for U.S. and Canadian venture-backed M&A.

So far this year, acquirers have spent just over $22 billion in disclosed-price purchases of U.S. and Canadian VC-funded companies, according to Crunchbase data. In the chart below, we look at the largest disclosed-price acquisitions for Q2:

Can We Go Higher?

So is this the top? We can’t answer that, of course. But having crunched data for a few market cycles, we can say that present conditions sure share a lot more in common with a cyclical peak than a trough.

It’s not just North America, either. In his overview of the high-flying global Q2 venture funding numbers, Crunchbase’s Jason Rowley also observed that current investment levels are “not normal.”

And it could stay not normal for a while longer, given the huge reserves North American venture capital firms have been stockpiling. So far this year, at least a half-dozen U.S.-headquartered firms have closed or initiated fundraising for new funds of a billion dollars or more. Sequoia Capital alone has closed on $6 billion out of what could end up as an $8 billion global growth fund.

So yes, things could inflate further. That said, nothing goes up forever.

Glossary of Funding Terms

• Seed/Angel include financings that are classified as a seed or angel, including accelerator fundings and equity crowdfunding below $5 million.
• Early-stage venture include financings that are classified as a Series A or B, venture rounds without a designated series that are below $15M, and equity crowdfunding above $5 million.
• Late-stage venture include financings that are classified as a Series C+ and venture rounds greater than $15M.
• Technology Growth include private equity investments with participation from venture investors.

The Texas venture scene continues its rollercoaster ride.

After a relatively strong first quarter, the venture funding scene in Texas was unable to keep pace in the second quarter. When compared to the first quarter of 2018, venture dollars raised in Texas were down by 17 percent to $506.2 million, according to Crunchbase News research. Compared to the second quarter of 2017 when $762.3 million was raised across 135 deals, dollars raised were down 34 percent and deal volume dropped by 38 percent.

As in previous quarters, Austin startups brought in the majority of the funding. The Texas capital is smaller than both Houston and Dallas in population, yet it raised nearly two-thirds of the state’s venture dollars during the second quarter.

Venture capitalists pumped $328.6 million into Austin startups across 43 known deals in the second quarter, according to Crunchbase data. That’s 9 percent less than the $359.3 million raised in the previous quarter across 39 transactions. A number of Austin startups closed on double-digit funding rounds. SaaS provider raised $64 million in a Series A round, and cashback app brought in $45 million in a Series A round. Telehealth startup also raised $22.4 million in a Series A round.

Dallas accumulated $138 million across 20 transactions; however, that was down 22 percent from the $178 million raised across 21 deals in the Q1 2018.  One company alone was responsible for nearly one-fourth of the total raised in the city: Dallas-based —a sporting goods marketplace —closed on a $35 million funding round in April.

Houston’s second quarter performance dipped when compared to the previous quarter. The city raised $33.2 million raised across 14 deals compared to $37.2 million over ten deals in Q1 2018. Its largest known venture round was a $2.8 million raise by medical device startup in late May.

But the numbers don’t tell the whole story of Texas’s venture capital scene, so we talked to some investors in the area to get the big picture.

Austin

Austin is known for being the Lone Star State’s tech hub. And while it’s true that a number of large tech companies (including Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google) have a presence in the city, its startup scene has struggled to gain any real momentum. On the positive side, existing funds have continued to raise money and newer funds have popped up. , for example, quietly opened up shop with a $35 million fund in the capital city this year.

, Partner at Austin-based early-stage VC firm , said his team focuses more on new company formation rather than total dollars raised.

“I can see why [dollars raised] is an important benchmark,” he told Crunchbase News. “But from our perspective, we’ve seen so many new and interesting companies over the past couple of quarters. And not just in Austin, but out of Dallas and Houston as well.”

LiveOak Venture Partners closed a $100M fund in 2014 and is in the process of a $110 million raise. The firm invests about 60 percent of its funds in the Austin market; 25 percent in Dallas; and 15 percent in Houston, Shamapant estimates.

In the second quarter, a number of LiveOak’s portfolio companies closed follow-on financings. The firm also invested in Austin-based .

“New deal activity is the most robust we’ve seen in a while,” Shamapant said. “We’re seeing a significant shift toward companies having more revenue traction and an MVP (minimally viable product) before we’re seeing them. They’re not just coming in with a PowerPoint presentation. We’re seeing more than ten companies every week come in for first meetings.”

Austin, he noted, has historically focused on enterprise software. However, Shampant believes the city is starting to see more tech-enabled service companies and vertical SaaS businesses catering to a variety of industries such as legal, pharmaceutical, and real estate.

He also believes the collaboration among the city’s VCs is growing.

“It’s very common for people to ask each other if they’ve looked at a particular company or if they want to work on a deal together,” Shamapant said. “That’s great for the market. At the end of the day, all of us will succeed, and we are defined by each other’s successes as much as our own activity. We believe that Texas is going to be a fantastic VC market.”

Dallas

, managing director of Dallas-based , believes the quantity of VC firms is “starting to go up again,” particularly in Dallas and Austin.

“That’s good. I want co-investors to help share the risk, and smarter people around the table,” he said. “And it’s still to the point where no one is competing for deals. But while there’s some growth, more firms would definitely be better.”

In Dallas, Mendoza has seen an increase in AI and machine-learning companies, especially in the SaaS space. His firm, founded in 2011, is focused on enterprise B2B software. It closed its first fund in 2013 (in which it raised $10 million) and is going to close on a second, larger fund.

However, Mendoza is seeing a decline in the quality of the startups seeking money.

“Over the past year or so, we’ve noticed a trend downward in the quality of companies looking for early-stage funding,” he told Crunchbase News. “I’m not sure why that is exactly, but it’s something myself and other investors have noticed—that the quality is not quite there.”

For his part, Live Oak’s Shamapant – a former general partner at – sees a lot of potential in the Dallas market.

“One of the most successful markets for us personally at Austin Ventures was Dallas. We have always been big believers that Dallas has a lot of entrepreneurship talent, but it’s just taken a while to get organized,” he said. “We expect to see a lot more activity there in the near future.”

Houston

, co-founder and managing director of Houston-based , acknowledges that the second quarter was “fairly quiet” in Houston.

The few investments made were mainly in energy tech companies such as , , and . Life sciences made a small debut through startups such as (mentioned above) and .

During the second quarter of 2018, Mercury Fund made eleven follow-on investments into existing portfolio companies (four of which had headquarters in Houston or have a Houston office) and just one new investment in an Indianapolis-based startup.

Looking ahead, Garrou is optimistic that Houston will see an uptick in venture capital financings based on the companies who are currently out fundraising.

“A number of Texas-based VCs have raised new funds and will be looking to put the capital to work,” he wrote via email.

And while dollars raised is not the only barometer of success, it can’t be ignored.

Editorial correction: A company round in the dataset was incorrectly attributed to Houston. The startup was actually based in Austin. The article has been updated to reflect this change.

Based on projections from Crunchbase, Crunchbase News reports that global venture capital activity has once again set post-Dot Com records. Specifically, deal and dollar volume blew past last quarters’ highs, propelled by an upswing in late-stage venture capital investments and an Asian venture market at full boil.

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In this report from Crunchbase News, we’ll cover these milestones and more as we venture deep into what the world’s private-market startup and tech investors did in Q2 2018. Here, using data and projections from Crunchbase, we’ll cover both sides of the venture market: Money In and Money Out.

In the Money In section, we will cover Crunchbase’s projections of how—and how much—the world’s VCs invested in Q2 2018. We’ll then evaluate how that result compares to both Q1 and Q2 2017. Accordingly, we’ll get some perspective on sequential quarter and year-over-year performance.

In the Money Out section, we’ll review acquisition statistics and highlight other notable liquidity events, including the thawing market for technology IPOs.

To help you digest this report, each section will contain a bullish and bearish key finding. Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Money In

• Bullish Key Finding. Once again, Crunchbase projections indicate that, in Q2 2018, venture deal and dollar volume surpass last quarter’s totals to set new post-Dot Com records. This was spurred on by gains in seed-stage deal volume and late-stage dollar volume.
• Bearish Key Finding. With tens of billions of dollars in new venture capital pouring into private technology companies, we’re in awe of the size of these deals. But, simultaneously, we’re left scratching our heads as we wonder not if this climate is sustainable (it isn’t) but when and how it will go about slowing down.

An Overview of The Venture Capital Landscape

The past three months have been characterized by rounds denominated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, a raft of new billion-dollar venture funds, more unironic love of unicorns than a book of Lisa Frank illustrations, and a spring fling with scooters and bicycles that’s due to extend into the dog days of summer.

Try to remember: this is not normal and this too will die down when the punch bowl gets taken away. Until that happens, though, party on.

From the outside, the venture investment market may look like a real raucous shindig; however on the inside, only a few groups are responsible for most of the rowdiness.

When it comes to fundraising, Chinese startups, taken collectively, are the middleweights who throw a heavyweight punch. Accounting for just 17 percent of all reported venture funding rounds, Chinese startups took down 47 percent of total reported VC dollar volume in Q2. This includes a preposterously large raised by . (To learn more about reported data, check out the Methodology section at the end.)

Late-stage startups are the older folks at the party. There aren’t many of them, but they make considerably more money and seem to have an insurmountable head start compared to everyone else. Still though, they’re not above asking for money to bankroll big dreams.

According to projected data from Crunchbase, late-stage companies were involved in just seven percent of Q2’s venture investment deals but received a staggering 64 percent of the capital. (To learn more about projected data, and how we categorized the different funding stages, check out the Methodology section at the end.)

But what’s spiking the punch? It’s a combination of fresh animal spirits and old standby geopolitical conditions.

Older factors first:

• Global interest rates remain fairly low, even as some large economies approach full employment. In other words, money is still pretty cheap, a condition that favors risk capital.
• Despite deepening political divides in the world’s democracies, and autocrats vying to expand their power, these domestic issues didn’t really overflow into international economic relations until the latter bits of Q2.
• The IPO window remains very much open for tech companies looking to debut on public markets.

Newer and emerging factors:

• Since it started investing in May 2017, continues to bend the curve of late-stage dealmaking toward larger checks and accelerating the seed-to-unicorn funding timeline.
• The United States is taking an increasingly hostile approach with economic trading partners, and its government may seek to limit cross-border investments.

To see how these phenomena may manifest themselves, let’s dive into the numbers.

Global Funding Activity: A View From Cruising Altitude

This section is a high-level look at the state of the market. We’re going to examine both the overall size and number of deals struck in the second quarter of 2018. After this 30,000-foot view, we’ll break these statistics down by stage.

Pace of Dealmaking

By looking at the pace of venture capital dealmaking, we’re able to get a feel for how fast (or slow) the market is moving. Projections from Crunchbase suggest that more deals were struck in Q2 2018 than in any prior quarter since the collapse of the Dot Com bubble. At current pace, global deal volume in 2018 is set to far exceed 2017’s record-breaking totals.

Up 19 percent from Q1’s levels, overall deal volume grew faster than any other period since Q1 2015.

Although it’s difficult to discern from the chart above, deal volume is breaking out of a merely linear growth pattern. The rate of change is growing, too, leading overall deal volume to grow larger at an accelerating rate, at least for the time being.

As we’ll see in later sections, much of this growth is attributable to a global spike in seed and early-stage dealmaking.

Projected VC Dollar Volume

As we alluded to earlier, global VC dollar volume in Q2 also set a post-Dot Com record. Although seed and early-stage drove growth in deal volume (mostly because those two stages account for a surpassing majority of the deals struck in any given quarter), the chart below shows that late-stage deals are responsible for much of the growth in venture dollar volume.

Crunchbase data indicates that the amount of money invested through the first half of 2018—a projected $175 billion so far—already exceeds annual totals from the years between 2002 and 2016. 2018’s funding totals are on track to exceed 2017’s total—approximately $212 billion, according to Crunchbase’s projections—by a large margin, provided that momentum keeps up.

Although dollar volume grew across all funding stages since Q1, most of the growth came from late-stage deals. At a projected 64 percent of total dollar volume this quarter, late-stage companies account for the largest share of quarterly dollar volume since at least Q3 2013, and likely further back than that.

A quarter-over-quarter change of 26 percent is the biggest such jump in aggregate dollar volume since Q2 2017.

Most Active Lead Investors

Now let’s take a look at which venture investors are leading the charge by leading the most rounds.

Here, we analyzed reported venture capital round data in Crunchbase from Q2. For most deals, Crunchbase lists at least one investor involved with any particular round, and many of those investors are designated as leads or participants. From the set of seed, early-stage, and late-stage rounds we analyzed, we identified 2,369 individual and institutional investors who led at least one round out of a pool of 5,832 unique investors involved in at least one venture round from the past quarter.

Here are the most active lead investors from Q2.

Keep in mind that this is based only on reported data for deals currently listed in Crunchbase, which is subject to change as new deals and investors are surfaced over time. That said, the general rankings are unlikely to shift all that much.

Stage-By-Stage Analysis of Q2 2018’s VC Funding Trends

Now that we’ve had the chance to assess the market in broad strokes, let’s get a bit more fine-grained.

In the following section, we’ll take a look at funding activity within each stage of the startup funding cycle. As we’ve done in prior quarterly reports, we’ll start “close to the metal” by analyzing angel and seed-stage backing and then move up the stack from there.

Angel And Seed-Stage Deals

The first round of outside funding may be the smallest investor check a startup will cash, but it’s typically the hardest to raise. Startups and investors alike paid little heed to those hard facts in Q2, which, according to projections, is a new high-water mark in angel and seed-stage deal and dollar volume globally.

You can find a chart of angel and seed-stage deal and dollar volume below.

Angel and seed-stage investment activity made up 61 percent of Q2 ‘18 deal volume but just four percent of total dollar volume, roughly in line with prior quarters’ totals. Although deal and dollar volume are both up, growth in deal counts leads the way.

Let’s take a look at how the size of angel and seed-stage deals changed over the past year.

Reported data from Crunchbase indicates that mean and median round size grew since the prior quarter—to the tune of 8.3 and twenty percent, respectively. Relative to the same period of time last year, angel and seed-stage deals are larger as well. This will be a running theme throughout this report, barring a few exceptions.

So which investors were the most active in the scene? In Q2’s funding rounds data, we identified 2,325 unique investors involved in one or more angel and seed-stage deals last quarter. Here are the most active among them:

As is the case with prior quarters, many of the most active investors at this stage are accelerator programs and dedicated seed funds.

What’s interesting about this quarters’ ranking is its makeup. There are a lot of sector- and region-specific investors on this list. Here are some highlights:

• is a Chicago-based group founded in 2017 that building technical infrastructure catering to progressive political campaigns and constituencies.
• is a startup accelerator program created by the Chilean government in 2010. It Chilean founders and those who are willing to start and scale their businesses in Chile.
• We covered in our Q1 report. To recap: Hiventures is a state-sponsored venture capital firm based in Hungary. The organization offers a full suite of funding options, spanning the cycle from upstart acceleration to late-stage equity deals with .
• , as its name suggests, is a Memphis-based firm which raised by companies in life sciences and agriculture. Crunchbase News mentioned Innova Memphis in our profile of Southern startups and investors from March.
• was founded in 1999 and primarily based in Pittsburgh and elsewhere in southwestern Pennsylvania.
• is the investment arm of an accelerator program at the University of California Berkeley of the same name. The program founded by Berkeley alumni, students, and faculty.

Early-Stage Deals

Early stage (Series A, Series B, and other venture rounds sized between roughly $1 million and $15 million) is when we start talking about real money. Underscoring that, early-stage deals represented about 32 percent of overall deal volume and 29 percent of dollar volume in Q2.

According to projections from Crunchbase, worldwide early-stage deal and dollar volume also set post-Dot Com records. Here is the data for Q2 and the preceding four quarters.

As was the case with seed, early-stage activity is up relative to Q1 2018 and the same period of time last year. Quarter-over-quarter growth is once again led by deal volume. Also note the significant increase in dollar volume relative to last year, an additional $7.6 billion, according to Crunchbase projections.

To see what might be driving the rather modest quarterly growth in dollar volume, let’s check out the average size of early-stage funding rounds over time.

Early-stage deal size presents one of the few cases of sequential quarterly declines in this report. Reported data suggests that the only reason projected early-stage dollar volume grew is because the uptick in round counts was sufficient to offset modest average and median deal size shrinkage from last quarter. Despite this, relative to the same time last year, early-stage deals are still notably larger.

Which firms are the most active early-stage dealmakers? Below you can find the investors involved in the most early-stage deals in Q2, which we identified out of a pool of 2,641 individual and institutional entities from around the world.

As was the case in Q1, an increasing number of the world’s most active early-stage investors are based in China or invest primarily in Chinese startups. Out of the fourteen firms listed above, six are Chinese:

Note that Matrix Partners China raised , which was announced in late June. One day prior, Sequoia Capital China filed paperwork for three new funds: , , and . It’s still uncertain how big, exactly, the venture and seed funds will be, but prior reporting indicates the China-focused growth vehicle could be between $1.6 and $1.8 billion in size.

Given the new capital flowing into these entities, it’s likely that many of the funds listed above will remain active into the coming quarters.

Late-Stage Deals

If a startup doesn’t fail, get bought, go public, or otherwise stop raising capital after Series B, then it graduates to join the ranks of late-stage ventures. And, as we alluded to earlier, it’s late stage where most of this quarter’s excitement lies. Why? Late-stage deals are driving most of the dollar volume growth and, like earlier stages of funding, are setting post-Dot Com records for aggregate counts and cumulative size of transactions.

Here are the numbers.

It’s difficult to overemphasize how late-stage venture investment activity is driving current market conditions, and it’s mostly because of the rapid pace of growth. Crunchbase projects that a staggering $16.4 billion in additional capital was invested in late-stage deals in Q2 as compared to Q1, though part of that is no doubt attributable to that $14 billion Series C round raised by Ant Financial we mentioned earlier. Still though, late-stage dollar volume in Q2 2018 is more than double its levels from Q2 2017. And while late-stage activity has consistently represented about seven percent of deal volume over the past four quarters, it makes up a growing proportion of dollar volume. For perspective, late-stage rounds accounted for about 42 percent of dollar volume in Q2 2017. Late-stage rounds made up 64 percent of dollar volume in Q2 2018.

Consistent, if incremental, growth in deal volume may make up part of the gains in dollar volume, but deals have grown larger over time, too.

The average late-stage deal is not quite double what it was a year ago, but it’s pretty close. Average deal size is up nearly a third since last quarter alone. Besides that Ant Financial round, here are a few other rounds which bumped averages higher:

• In June, Singaporean ride-hailing service snagged round from and co-founder ’s family office . This came just over a month after to Grab.
• raised $600 million in led by . Crunchbase News covered that round as news broke in June.
• In the alternative transportation sector, Shanghai-based raised over $1 billion in Q2, according to Crunchbase data. The first chunk came through in April in the form of round co-led by Ant Financial and . Just two months later, in June, Ant Financial invested an additional RMB2.06 billion ($321 million) in Hellobike in that valued the company at $1.47 billion post-money.
• In a similar vein, Crunchbase News covered the which valued scooters-as-a-service provider at $2 billion post-money.
• Bike companies weren’t the only ones raising over a billion dollars last quarter, though. , a Beijing-based computer vision company, raised over $1.2 billion in Q2. The first part of its Series C round, , was announced in April. On May 31, SenseTime announced it extended its Series C round . The second transaction values SenseTime at over $4.5 billion, according to Crunchbase data.

Collectively, these rounds helped bump up global averages. But, as a group, late-stage rounds are creeping ever-larger, as evidenced by growth in median deal size. It’s not just a matter of outlying giants goosing the average.

Let’s see which investors were the most active in this growing pool of late-stage capital.

There aren’t any major surprises here. Like in previous quarters, the most active late-stage investors are older, more established firms, which are able to raise lots of capital and invest it in these growing mega-rounds.

Technology Growth Deals

Long-time readers of Crunchbase News’s quarterly reports may remember that “technology growth” is a bit of a strange stage to cover.

Starting in our Q4 2017 Global report, Crunchbase News worked with the Crunchbase team to re-define the technology growth stage. Prior to that report, technology growth rounds were defined as “any ‘private equity’ round in which a ‘venture’ investor participated.” The new working definition, which we’ve adhered to since Q4 2017, is “any ‘private equity’ round raised by a company which has raised ‘venture’ funding (like a seed round, or a Series C, for example) in its prior round(s).”

Just like in prior quarters, tech growth investing activity is kind of all over the place, as you can see in the chart below.

Although the projected number of technology growth deals, and the amount of money invested in them, both rose since last quarter, it’s become a less important class of deals over time as deals shrink in size.

Though technology growth deals—as currently defined—are fewer and farther between, there were still a number of notable deals from Q2. Here’s a selection:

• , the Seattle-based pet boarding marketplace, raised led by T. Rowe Price. Prior to that infusion of capital, Rover had raised nearly .
• , a large consumer-focused investment firm, invested with . The Honest Company was co-founded by in 2012 and from the likes of , , , and to develop and grow its natural baby and home products lines.
• , an online marketplace for engaged couples planning weddings based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, raised led by European PE firm . Permira acquired a majority stake in WeddingWire through the transaction. WeddingWire raised from investors including , prior to the PE deal with Permira.

With so much variability from quarter to quarter, and a relatively small number of transactions, it’s difficult to make more claims about technology growth rounds. But it’s fair to say that deep-pocketed PE investors may have less luck getting into deals as venture firms continue to raise bigger funds to bankroll late-stage bets.

And with that, we come to the end of this quarter’s look at venture investment around the world.

Money Out

• Bullish Key Finding. The IPO window remains open, and public market investors are increasingly willing to entertain non-standard listing arrangements if, like Spotify, companies are well-known and on reasonably sound economic footing.
• Bearish Key Finding. The recovery in deal volume for venture-backed M&A deals we got excited about in Q1 was cut short as deal volume declined at its fastest quarter-over-quarter rate in years.

Venture-Backed Acquisitions

We spent a great deal of time in earlier sections looking at the “input” side of the VC investment equation, but no assessment of the market would be complete without a look at the output as well.

It’s important to remember that stock in privately-held companies like tech startups is treated very differently than shares traded on an open market like the New York Stock Exchange. For a bunch of legal reasons not worth getting into here, there are plenty of barriers around buying private company stock, but even more around liquidating a position.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is one of two primary ways individual angels and professional venture capitalists get their money back (and hopefully more than they initially put in). The chart below shows reported M&A deal and dollar volume in Q2 2018 and the four prior quarters.

Much like with technology growth-stage investments, dollar volume can vary wildly. Just like there isn’t a one-size-fits-all private equity investment round, there isn’t much uniformity in the world of M&A deals either.

This is why, in prior reports, we’ve focused on deal volume and its ebbs and flows. And, to be honest, it’s trended more toward ebbs over time. Last quarter, we noticed that venture deal volume may have turned the corner on a years-long downtrend stretching back to Q1 2016. But, alas, with the biggest reported quarter-over-quarter drop in deal volume since at least Q1 2015, those hopes are dashed for now.

This isn’t to say that there haven’t been many big or otherwise remarkable M&A deals in Q2. It was a good quarter for a number of venture-backed companies, as we can see in our ranking of the largest mergers and acquisitions.

The ecommerce and career service sectors were particularly lively last quarter. Ecommerce giants continued to use M&A to further expand their scope and consolidate market dominance.

Reports that Amazon has been interested in the healthcare market for some time now, but of mail order pre-packaged prescription pharmacy service at the end of Q2 was among the company’s most concrete forays into the market to date. The move led shares of publicly-traded pharmacy chains like Rite Aid, Walgreens Boots Alliance, and CVS Health to shed $11 billion in market value when the deal was announced on June 28th, . Amazon’s market capitalization jumped $19.8 billion that day.

Separately, won the bidding war for Indian ecommerce company , which, , was the largest M&A exit of a venture-backed tech startup since in February 2014. Also last quarter, for $1.68 billion, , a hosted ecommerce platform akin to , as the creative toolmaker its Experience Cloud offering.

On the career services front, HR and workforce solutions conglomerate —a provider of online and in-person instruction in fields like data science, software development, and design—for $413 million. , the website where you can compare employers and sift through self-reported salary data, was .

But perhaps the biggest story in the recruiting and professional development sector is Microsoft’s of software version control and collaboration platform . Although there’s no immediate indication Microsoft intends to marry data or functionality () with GitHub—a service which many software developers use as their de facto resume—the potential for Microsoft to build the one developer recruiting solution to rule them all may prove difficult to resist in the future.

Let’s see what’s going on at the other side of the liquidity pool.

Initial Public Offerings

Initial public offerings are the second primary way venture investors get to cash out their positions.

The good news for investors and founders alike is that the IPO window remains very much open. Here are some of the biggest public market debuts from Q2.

At the end of April, ReCode that, at that point in the year, 2018 had twice as many initial public offerings as the same period of time in 2017. And given the number of S-1 filings and first trades Crunchbase News has covered this quarter, we’re willing to bet that that trend kept up through the end of the second quarter.

Barring total calamity, the past two quarters’ momentum is likely to keep up through the latter half of the year.

Conclusion

The first half of 2018 winds goes out with a bang.

With post-Dot Com highs at fresh levels, billions of dollars flowing in from limited partners to bankroll new funds, and an accelerating rate of growth in many markets, it would seem that everything is .

This being said, all fun times must come to an end eventually. The current climate of late-stage largesse and general ebullience in the market raises some important questions about sustainability and long-term value appreciation prospects.

Q3 is likely to be a pivotal quarter in this current bull run. We’ll have to wait and see what’s going to slow down this market, but it’s probably not at the braking point yet.

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and in two varieties: projected data and reported data.

Crunchbase uses projections for global and U.S. trend analysis. Projections are based on historical patterns in late reporting, which are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity. Using projected data helps prevent undercounting or reporting skewed trends that only correct over time. All projected values are noted accordingly.

Certain metrics, like mean and median reported round sizes, were generated using only reported data. Unlike with projected data, Crunchbase calculates these kinds of metrics based only on the data it currently has. Just like with projected data, reported data will be properly indicated.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to US dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs, and other financial events as reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Glossary of Funding Terms

• Seed/Angel include financings that are classified as a seed or angel, including accelerator fundings and equity crowdfunding below $5 million.
• Early stage venture include financings that are classified as a Series A or B, venture rounds without a designated series that are below $15M, and equity crowdfunding above $5 million.
• Late stage venture include financings that are classified as a Series C+ and venture rounds greater than $15M.
• Technology Growth include private equity investments with participation from venture investors.