So what happened in April 2023?
What will be no surprise to anyone with even a remote interest in the startup sector, funding for April remained relatively subdued in terms of numbers of announced deals. Funding levels for the month were buoyed massively by one funding round which accounted for 45% of the total value of the deals announced. What our analysis shows which might be a little surprising is that the level of funding is actually relatively healthy for April, which has tended towards lower levels of announced deals and represents the strongest overall result since November 2022.
The number of deals announced for April was a little subdued although we do expect the amount of deals to increase as we receive more returns from Angel groups.
The chart below indicates that apart from Series B, average deal sizes by deal label or stage has generally maintained or increased slightly since the March Quarter 2023.
Megadeals ($50m+) in March Q
Only two private investment megadeals were announced in April 2023, which is generally consistent with what we have seen over the past few months, with 4 megdeals captured over the March Q, which combined together at $275m is greater than half the total value of the deals announced in the month of April. As we have consistently shown, the outsized impact of mega-deals of greater than $50m in value is nothing new, for example, in the March Q five deals collectively accounted for roughly $430m of the $1.008b captured for the quarter.
Both private investment megadeals for April came from the Healthtech sector. Saluda Medical secured $225M investment Led by Wellington Management Eucalyptus, a telehealth startup, closes a $50m series D raise. In addition, Climatetech Intellihub, a smart meter growth company, secured a significant $500m in debt funding.
Deals by Industry Sector
In recent editions of FUNDED we have been providing summaries by leading industry sectors, in part due to their sheer dominance in terms of number and scale of deals done. The three leading sectors in recent times have been Climatetech, Fintech and Healthtech. During April the only sector that was particularly dominant was HealthTech, which with the significant boost by the Saluda Medical deal accounted for $282m across seven investments. Climate Tech saw $40.75m across 6 deals and Fintech saw $37.4 across 4 announced deals. Another sectors that saw a similarly large amount of private investment were Adtech & Martech, due to Rokt's $40m, Cybersecurity which saw $29.8m in funding going to Fivecast an Adelaide-based Security AI Software startup and Drones & Aviation which saw Propellor raising $22.8m.
In addition to the Saluda Medical and Eucalyptus megadeals outlined above Techboard captured additional Healthtech Deals including, Carina Biotech a cancertech startup, which closed a $10m funding round (read more), Endo Axiom, an oral Insulin Startup, receives $2.2m investment (read more) and Modo, a mental health startup which closed an $800k pre-seed raise (read more).
Significant Climatetech Deals include Novalith, a cleantech startup whcih closed a $23m funding round (read more), Cortical Labs, a synthetic biology startup, which closed a $15m raise (read more) and Whole, a foodtech startup, which closed a $1.4m seed raise (read more.)
Looking at Fintech, me&u, a meal ordering platform, announced that it had closed a $30m series C raise 4 months ago (read more), and Waave, an open banking fintech, closed a $4.7m seed round (read more.) In addition Artesian revealed it had invested an undisclosed amount in Group Together, a group payment fintech and io.insure, an insurtech platform, announced it secured strategic investment from Direct Capital (read more.)
Missed our Funding Update for the March Q 2023?
We have prepared a bundle of interesting charts and have undertaken analysis of the March Q 2023 in its historical context .. so you don't have to. Click below to access our Canva Presentation. Read on below if you want to know more about the quarter's significant deals.
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