March Fundraising Feature: UK & NY
Welcome to our March Fundraise Feature, in which we bring you an overview of the Seed - Series B tech fundraises from across the United Kingdom and New York, that were announced in the past month.
As we've reached the end of Q1, it is interesting to see the change in investment patterns with UK starting the year with a high amount of capital invested (c.£650M), dropping to almost half of this amount in February (£322M) and back to picking up the pace in March, investing £334M into startups.
In New York, the invested capital has increased each month, with January seeing £432M being invested, February secured around £450M, with March being the highest month of investments, banking in nearly £560M. There were also 3 exits in New York over Q1!
Keep reading to get a breakdown of some of last month's notable deals and the main investors that backed these exciting raises, all thanks to PitchBook's research.
Data provided by Pitchbook
In March, the UK saw 39 companies successfully close deals worth nearly £340M. This capital was provided by 122 investors and was split between Seed, Series A and Series B businesses.
Highest Capital Investment
Fintech was the most invested industry during March, having received in total just under £88M in invested capital. HealthTech followed very closely behind, having raised nearly £87M.
Huge congratulations to these companies for securing the most capital within their industries:
Lenkie, a financial platform that offers flexible funding solutions to help businesses grow, has successfully raised £49M in their Series A.
Maxion Therapeutics, a platform for generating antibody-like therapeutics, raised £58M in their Series A funding round.
Life Sciences, SaaS and B2B Payments made it to the top 5 most invested industries this month, each industry securing £60M, £52M and £49M respectively.
We would like to spotlight some of these amazing companies for their funding accomplishments:
Swap, operating a product return platform that automates shipping and returns through instant exchange technology, has raised nearly £32M in their Series B round.
TRIMTECH Therapeutics, a developer of a targeted protein degradation platform aimed at addressing neurodegenerative diseases by degrading toxic protein aggregates, has secured justa bove £25M in their Seed round.
The rest of the invested capital was equally spread within the rest of the industries, capturing growth opportunities across all emerging markets.
Notable Investors
We cannot forget to appreciate all the investors that make all these funding rounds possible, by providing the valuable capital that allows startups to scale operations and enter new markets.
Haatch, for providing Seed capital to Bourn, Demand-Genius, Fundin and Inicio AI.
Portfolio Ventures, for investing capital into Firenze, Swap and Bourne.
SFC Capital, for supporting Lumin, Paapi and Xertilox.
Funding stages
Understanding the funding stages distribution helps us better understand the bigger picture in the fundraising world. With our network mainly being early-stage finance leaders, founders and investors, in the startup tech space, we decided to mainly focus on the Seed-Series B space over the last 3 months.
Last month in the UK, the investments were split between these 3 fundraise stages:
Series A accounted for 57.32% of all allocated capital, which shows that investors continue to provide capital for more established businesses, that have proven their concept and are ready to grow and expand.
Seed and Series B split the rest of the investments, with Seed receiving a slightly bigger percentage (22.07%) and Series B rounds following closely behind with 20.61%.
Summary
The UK's Seed to Series B tech investment landscape continues to grow and evolve, having raised nearly £340M in March, with over half the investments going towards Series A businesses. FinTech and HealthTech received the most invesments in the last month, with the rest of the capital being invested similarly among the rest of the industries.
New York
Data provided by Pitchbook
Across the pond in New York, nearly 200 investors came together in the month of March to invest just under £560M into 44 companies in the funding stages between Seed and Series B.
Highest Capital Investment
The most invested industry in March was AI & Machine Learning, receiving an astonishing £460M in investment. The second highest invested industry was SaaS which secured over £310M in funding.
Here's a highlight of some companies from these industries that have secured funding:
Reflection AI, a company that develops artificial intelligence technology aimed at creating superhuman coding agents, has raised £83M in Series A funding.
Radar, a real-time inventory management technology that combines computer vision with RFID technology to provide unit-level analytics for retail processes, has secured £50M in Series A round.
Carbon Arc, a data intelligence platform that enables users to build models, make decisions, and analyze trends, received £43M in Series A.
Mobile, HealthTech and Big Data were the remaining industries from the top 5, receiving funding between £90M and £160M.
Congratulations to the businesses in these industries for successfully raising capital:
Distributed Spectrum, a spectrum monitoring system that provides critical situational awareness and actionable alerts, has raised nearly £20M in Series A round.
Arlo Health, a health insurance platform designed to provide affordable and employee-centric healthcare coverage, secured over £3M in their Seed round.
Notable Investors
Venture Capital investors believe in bold ideas and provide the crucial support that turns visions into reality. Their trust, guidance, and funding empower startups to innovate, grow, and shape the future. In March, we would like to spotlight these VCs for providing support and financial backing into startups:
Accel, having provided funding to Graphite and Silna Health.
Bain Capital Ventures, for backing Norm AI and Silna Health.
Craft Ventures, for supporting Pickle and Norm AI.
Funding Stages
In March, the capital allocation in New York was split between early stage and later stage companies with the following percentages:
The overwhelming majority of capital was invested into Series A businesses with 70.76% of deals occuring in this funding stage.
Seed and Series B stages received a very similar split, Seed companies receiving 14.84% of capital and Series B receiving 14.4%.
Summary
New York saw an impressive effort in the fundraise market, with a total of 197 investors providing nearly £560M in capital for startups, with AI & Machine Learning leading the industry race, and Series A being the most preferred funding stage of business to invest in.
It was been a brilliant quarter in the Venture Capital world and we are excited to see what Q2 has waiting for us.
Join us at the end of the month of April updates.
This article was created utilising data from PitchBook and will be a recurring monthly article we will produce. If you want to stay up to date with startup fundraising news, as well as receive our finance and founder resources, sign up here.
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