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Dashboard: Fundraising soars in February

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Fundraising (value up 29%)

Dashboard category up

U.S.-based venture firms raised $3.65 billion in February, more than $800 million than the $2.83 billion that was raised in January. General Catalyst Partners led the way in February, raising $680 million for its eighth flagship fund. Battery Ventures came in second by raising $650 million for its 11th primary vehicle, and Index Ventures finished third by pooling $550 million for its eighth main venture fund, which is based in San Francisco.

Deals (value down 27%)

Dashboard category down

Deals within the venture market dropped in February, with the aggregate value dropping 27 percent from January. The overall value went from $4.95 billion to $3.63 billion, despite the deal count going up from 307 to 322. The top deal of February was Magic Leap Inc, which superimposes virtual retinal imagery over real-world objects, and which raised $793.5 million in equity. Following that was a cloud-based video conferencing solution company, Fuze Inc, which raised $111 million in financing.

M&A (value up 84%)

Dashboard category up

Mergers and acquisitions soared after a slow opening month. There was a total of 20 venture-backed, U.S.-based companies that were acquired in February. Of those, five disclosed deal value that combined for a total in excess of $1.2 billion, a huge leap from the nearly $655 million in disclosed deal valuation in January. The No. 1 acquisition in February with a disclosed price was Solidfire Inc, which NetApp Inc acquired for $870 million.

IPOs (n/a)

Dashboard category up

After zero VC-backed IPOs went out in January, February accounted for four venture-backed IPOs that debuted on U.S. exchanges. Combined, their proceeds totaled $435.72 million in equity. The top U.S.-based VC-backed offering of the month was Editas Medicine Inc, a transformative genome editing company, going public for $108.6 million. Beijing-based drug developer BeiGene Beijing Co Ltd went public on The Nasdaq, raising more than $182 million in its IPO.

Source: Based on Thomson Reuters data

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