Friday, January 16, 2015
Southern California Venture Investments Top $1.3 Billion In Q4
Venture capitalists invested more than $1.3 billion in Southern California startup, according to the latest MoneyTree Report issued by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association last night, based on data from Thomson Reuters. The report tallied $1.09 billion in investments in Los Angeles, near $125M in Orange County, and $106.6M in investments in San Diego. The numbers in Southern California were significantly helped by two, mega-funding deals in Los Angeles, including $485.6M raised by SnapChat, and $320M in an investment in NantHealth.
Other large deals in the region included $60M invested in Irvine's Alteryx, $35M invested in Scopely, and $28M invested in Woven Digital. San Diego's largest deal was nearly $22M invested in BioNano Genomics.
Industry wise, by far, the largest investment was in the software area, with $1.02 billion in investments across the region. The next industry--but only by a longshot--was the consumer products and services area, which includes investments in local companies like DogVacay and Soylent.
The most active Southern California venture investors in Q4 were Frost Data Capital, with 10 investments; Correlation Ventures, with 9 investments; followed by Upfront Ventures, which made eight investments in the quarter.
Nationally, venture capital investments were at their highest in over a decade, reaching $14.8 billion into 1,109 deals in Q4; for the year, the numbers totaled $48.3 billion in 4,356 deals. HJ Paik, director of the Southern California Emerging Company Services practice at PwC, said that much of the growth came through an influx of private equity investors into the industry.