附近上门

Venture funding in January 2021 hit at an all-time monthly high of $39.9 billion, an analysis of 附近上门 data shows.听

Subscribe to the 附近上门 Daily

January鈥檚 funding total topped the previous monthly high of the last two years; July 2020 at $38.5 billion. A larger proportion of dollars in these funding spikes was also invested in late-stage venture capital 鈥� around 69 percent 鈥� with the lion鈥檚 share of capital going to Series C+ and private-equity rounds in venture-backed companies.听

Sectors which grew in January include delivery, robotics, logistics, automotive, fintech, and cloud computing.听

Private equity adds new portfolio companies

The most active private equity and alternative investors, including , , , and , had close to equal or the majority of investments in new portfolio companies.听

The most active venture capital firms 鈥� namely , , , , , and 鈥� primarily invested in existing portfolio companies in January.听

This was not the case in prior months with venture capital firms actively seeking out new investment opportunities in private companies experiencing increased consumer demand during the pandemic. , the venture arm of , and are the two multistage venture firms that invested in a greater number of new portfolio companies than existing follow-on investments last month.

Rounds $100 million and above rise significantly

The number of $100 million-plus funding rounds shot up in January, an all time record, according to 附近上门 data. The largest funding rounds went to Michigan-based electric vehicle company ($2.65 billion), self driving technology company ($2 billion) headquartered in San Francisco, Hong Kong-based logistics delivery company ($1.5 billion), and , the Silicon Valley-based day trading app at the center of the controversy around the stock-price surges in and other companies ($1 billion). Robinhood went on to raise another $2.4 billion in early February.听

New unicorns at the highest count per month ever

New unicorns joined in January at a dizzying clip of more than one each day 鈥� the highest count of new unicorns in a month ever. The U.S. alone had 23 new unicorns join the board last month, with the largest valuation at $4 billion for听 in a secondary investment led by . Atlanta鈥檚 was the second most highly valued new U.S.-based unicorn, having raised a Series B of $350 million led by .听

China created four new unicorns last month. The most highly valued of those was , a logistics startup with package drop-off and pickup stations across the country. Germany added three new unicorns, including its most highly valued new unicorn, startup fintech at $2.1 billion.

Public market debuts

On the public markets front, point-of-sale loans company 鈥� which delayed its initial public offering in December 鈥� finally went public last month, raising $1.2 billion and soaring on the first day of trading. merged with special purpose acquisition company Social Capital Hedosophia III at $3.7 billion. And fashion reseller , based in the Silicon Valley, went public at $3 billion,听 raising $277 million.听

The fastest to go public was , which is based in Beijing and was just founded in 2018. The second-fastest to IPO was cancer therapy company from the Jiangsu province in China, a company founded in 2017.听

Mergers and acquisitions

Overall, M&A activity was up when assessed by price during 2020. Month over month, M&A counts were up, reaching 193 in January 2021 — an all time high — with January 2019 the second-highest month for acquisition counts per 附近上门.听 M&A tracked at $16 billion in January 2021, the fifth-highest monthly amount in the past two years for acquisitions with disclosed prices.

The largest acquisition of a venture-backed company last month was for work collaboration company , which was purchased for $2.3 billion by . In the semiconductor industry, acquired , a startup chipmaker founded by engineers.听

acquired three companies: in the podcast discovery space; , a newsletter tool; and , a digital agency. The acquisitions point to Twitter鈥檚 increased push to shape itself into a broader听 content delivery platform as news disaggregates. Also during the month, venture firm announced its intention to become , and has become a home to more journalists venturing out on their own.听

Two other acquisitions in the content space were Toronto-based story-telling platform , acquired by South Korea-based for $600 million, and Chicago-based financial 鈥渆dutainment鈥� company , which was acquired by in the U.K. for $1 billion.听听

North America and Europe saw an increase

Venture investment in both North America and Europe trended up last month, a peak for both continents over the last two years. In North America, $24 billion in venture capital was deployed and in Europe $6.3 billion was invested in January, per 附近上门 data.听

In summary

In the last three years, we have seen the opening up of the IPO markets for tech companies. Out of the 10 most highly valued companies at IPO, three debuted in 2020 and two more have already debuted in 2021. And with January posting funding and unicorn-creation records across the board, 2021 is already shaping up to be a blockbuster year for the venture-backed world.听

Methodology

Pro tip: 附近上门 Pro allows users to easily query the dataset. Here are some used in this report. See the for January global funding information. Pro users can save the list to their account, filter by location and match it against target customers.

View the full list of private unicorns and the list of emerging unicorns.

Learn about companies that , and perform Pro searches for recent venture-backed acquisitions .

All are listed here.

Funding rounds included in this report are seed, angel, venture, corporate-venture and private-equity rounds in venture-backed companies. This reflects data in 附近上门 as of Feb. 3, 2020.

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

Illustration: