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Boston has regained its longstanding place as the second-largest U.S. startup funding hub.

After years of trailing New York City in total annual venture investment, Massachusetts is taking the lead in 2018. Venture investment in the Boston metro area hit $5.2 billion so far this year, on track to be the highest annual total in years.

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The Massachusetts numbers year-to-date are about 15 percent higher than the New York City total. That puts Boston鈥檚 biotech-heavy venture haul apparently second only to Silicon Valley among domestic locales thus far this year. And for New England VCs, the latest numbers also confirm already well-ingrained opinions about the superior talents of local entrepreneurs.

鈥淏oston often gets dismissed as a has-been startup city. But the successes are often overlooked and don鈥檛 get the same attention as less successful, but more hypey companies in San Francisco,鈥� Blake Bartlett, a partner at Boston-based venture firm , told 附近上门 News. He points to local success stories like online prescription service , which Amazon just snapped up for $1 billion, and online auto marketplace , which went public in October and is now valued around $4.7 billion.

Meanwhile, fresh capital is piling up in the coffers of local startups with all the intensity of a New England snowstorm. In the chart below, we look at funding totals since 2012, along with reported round counts.

In the interests of rivalry, we are also showing how the Massachusetts startup ecosystem compares to New York over the past five years.

Who鈥檚 Getting Funded?

So what鈥檚 the reason for Boston鈥檚 2018 successes? It鈥檚 impossible to pinpoint a single cause. The New England city鈥檚 startup scene is broad and has deep pockets of expertise in biotech, enterprise software, AI, consumer apps, and other areas.

Still, we鈥檇 be remiss not to give biotech the lion鈥檚 share of the credit. So far this year, biotech and healthcare have led the New England dealmaking surge, accounting for the majority of invested capital. Once again, local investors are not surprised.

鈥淏oston has been the center of the biotech universe forever,鈥� said Dylan Morris, a partner and Boston and Silicon Valley-based VC firm . That makes the city well-poised to be a leading hub in the sector鈥檚 latest funding and exit boom, which is capitalizing on a long-term shift toward more computational approaches to diagnosing and curing disease.

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Moreover, it goes without saying that the home city of MIT has a particularly strong reputation for so-called deep tech鈥攗sing really complicated technology to solve really hard problems. That鈥檚 reflected in the big funding rounds.

For instance, the largest Boston-based funding recipient of 2018, , is a developer of mRNA-based drugs that raised $625 million across two late-stage rounds. Besides Moderna, other big rounds for companies with a deep tech bent went to , which is focused on engineering T cells for cancer therapy, and (based in both Boston and New York), 聽which is deploying the world鈥檚 first millimeter wave band active phased array technology for consumer broadband.

Other sectors saw some jumbo-sized rounds too, including enterprise software, 3D printing, and even apparel.

Boston also benefits from the rise of supergiant funding rounds. A plethora of rounds raised at $100 million or more fueled the city鈥檚 rise in the venture funding rankings. So far this year, have raised rounds of that magnitude or more, compared to 12 in all of 2017.

Exits Are Happening, Too

Boston companies are going public and getting acquired at a brisk pace too this year, and often for big sums.

At least seven metro-area startups have sold for $100 million or more in disclosed-price acquisitions this year, according to 附近上门 data. In the lead is online prescription drug service PillPack. The second-biggest deal was , a provider of analytics for big financial institutions that sold to S&P Global for $550 million.

IPOs are huge, too. A total of have gone public so far this year, of which 15 are life science startups. The largest offering was for , a developer of red cell therapeutics, followed by cybersecurity provider .

Meanwhile, many local companies that went public in the past few years have since seen their values skyrocket. Bartlett points to examples including online retailer (market cap of $10 billion), marketing platform (market cap $4.8 billion), and enterprise software provider (sold to Salesforce for $2.8 billion).

New England Heats Up

Recollections of a frigid April sojourn in Massachusetts are too fresh for me to comfortably utter the phrase: Boston is hot. However, speaking purely about startup funding, and putting weather aside, the Boston scene does appear to be seeing some real escalation in temperature.

Of course, it鈥檚 not just Boston. Supergiant venture funds are surging all over the place this year. Morris is even bullish on the arch-rival a few hours south: 鈥淣ew York and Boston love to hate each other. But New York鈥檚 doing some amazing things too,鈥� he said, pointing to efforts to invigorate the biotech startup ecosystem.

Still, so far, it seems safe to say 2018 is shaping up as Boston鈥檚 year for startups.