The Most-Active, Spendiest Startup Investors Are Lagging Greatly In Lucrative Exits

The most-active, highest-spending startup investors are leading a lot of large new rounds lately.

When it comes to exits, however, things look much, much slower.

To illustrate, we used 附近上门 data to examine IPO and M&A exits since 2023 for six firms that regularly top our active lead investor rankings. The sample set included: , , , , and .

For startup history buffs, it鈥檚 an impressive set of names. These firms were early backers in a roster of marquee tech brands such as , , , , , and . They鈥檙e known both for finding future stars and for selling or taking them public at hefty valuations.

Exits stall, especially IPOs

Lately, however, that鈥檚 not happening.

附近上门 data showed that out of all lead investments from these firms, just have gone public since 2023. None have carried out an IPO so far this year.

In case you were wondering, that number represents a truly tiny share of total holdings. It鈥檚 also miniscule compared to how much these investors have been doling out in new rounds.

In just the past nine quarters 1, the six firms in our sample have participated as lead investors in , per 附近上门 data.聽2 Those investments聽 were collectively valued at over $46 billion, with more than a third coming from mega-rounds for , and .

Meanwhile, the last U.S. lead portfolio companies for this group to go public 鈥� biotechs and 鈥� have fared poorly since their fall debuts. Together they鈥檙e valued at under $250 million 鈥� less than what they raised in venture funding before that.

There have also been more successful debuts since 2023. However, they mostly involved companies that went public several quarters ago. This includes grocery delivery service , marketing automation platform , and data security provider .

M&A was sluggish too

The pace of large acquisitions also looks sluggish in recent quarters.

Since 2023, the investors in our sample had just 39 for companies in which they鈥檇 led rounds. Of those, eight sold for less than the capital they鈥檇 previously raised from investors.

Even so, there were some big outcomes in the mix. Examples include 鈥檚 $1.65 billion purchase of cybersecurity provider in September, and 鈥檚 3聽$1.9 billion acquisition of data protection startup that same month.

The M&A deal count is much higher if we add deals with no disclosed price. These are typically comprised of small-but-solid exits for earlier-stage companies, acquihires, startups merging with startups, and asset sales of companies that didn鈥檛 make it. Per 附近上门 data, there were in our sample set since 2023.

Outlook: More of the same

Looking ahead, there鈥檚 no sign of an imminent pickup in IPO filings for portfolio companies in our sample set. The market for tech offerings in particular has been quiet of late, despite the large pipeline of private unicorns and speculative IPO candidates.

As for M&A, there was optimism in startup circles a couple months ago that a new White House administration would provide a more M&A-friendly regulatory environment. That hasn鈥檛 yet translated into a flurry of dealmaking, although of course it鈥檚 still early days.

The ability of hot, later-stage companies to fundraise and carry out secondary offerings in the private markets, meanwhile, has contributed to longer timelines to exit in recent years. Decacorns like Stripe and Databricks have shown it鈥檚 possible to raise successive billions without turning to public investors.

And so, the exit scene remains uncharacteristically slow.

附近上门