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We鈥檝e been covering supergiant funding rounds of $100 million or more for months now.

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In early August, we filed a report indicating that July 2018 set a record for the number of nine-figure rounds raised worldwide that month. Indeed, with over accounting for just around $15 billion in venture capital deal flow, July was a good time to raise $100 million or more.

Was August, though? A few days into the ninth month of 2018, we can say the short answer is nope, not really. Does that matter? No.

Before getting into why, let鈥檚 take a look at the numbers. The chart below shows the count of supergiant rounds, by month, based on current data.

At the time of writing, Crunchbase recorded a total of raising $100 million or more. In sum, these deals raked in nearly $12.5 billion in funding. That marks an approximately twenty percent decline, month-on-month, in both supergiant VC deal and dollar volume.

Why the pullback? It鈥檚 tough to say. Tech-heavy public market indices like are sitting at or near all-time highs. There were some disappointments during earnings season, but nothing remarkable. Interest rates are rising, slowly, but money is still cheap. In other words, the usual stops along this train of thought turn up empty.

But a funding round announcement does not mean checks were cashed on the same day. It鈥檚 possible that startups, which had otherwise planned to disclose their rounds later, jumped on some funding announcement bandwagon. The dearth of August announcements may be found in July鈥檚 glut, but there鈥檚 no handy way to prove that.

However, it鈥檚 important to remember that venture capital is a slow-moving market. Month-to-month changes are basically random. It won鈥檛 be for another couple months until we see if the previously upward trend in supergiant VC deal activity traces a new path downward.

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