We head into February with many deals, large investments and high hopes. How we leave February certainly holds a different, untold story. While closing the door on our January report, we continued to see an increased activity in the startup investment world. Below, we provide overview to give some thoughts and facts on the events within last month.
Spanning hundreds of different markets, we use our pooled February data to look into a quick overview. With global coverage of investments, we look to give founders and investors an additional resource over the current state and future trends.
For Starters
Jumping into February, we recorded 254 deals combining for a total of $9,284,460,000. Looking back, the total of 254 deals stands as the most amount of deals we have recorded (since tracking individual investment deals in July 2019.)
Overall, February’s range of deal values are as followed:
- Minimum: $1,000,000 (Funded by Initialized Capital)
- Mode: $5,000,000 (18 Deals)
- Median $15,000,000
- Average $36,989,880
- Maximum: $700,000,000 (Funded by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group)
Global Review
We continue to see the US dominate the collective deals. Outside of the US ranges a globally diverse set of investments. The UK holds as the highest global contributor of deals (excluding the US) this month at $888M (9.1% of announced deals), up from $382M (3.6% of announced deals) last month.
Oppositely, China fell from amassing $573M from deals in January, to just a little over $154M during February. In a quickly forming development, Jason, from Crunchbase, highlighted the China fumbles in a (rather precocious) article from February 11th.
Global Funding Outside of U.S.
Funding Inside of U.S.
Frequent Players
In the scope of February, we see many familiar names rise to the top, in regards to the most frequent investors. Below, there are five investing firms (Accel, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Goldman Sachs) that returned from last month’s update on the most active investors.
High Rollers
Throughout all of February, most of our deals floated around $5M deals from our collection of investors. The upper echelon of February investors made deals worth 80x more than the standard.
We saw Bessemer Venture Partners and Tiger Global Management lead a $400M round of investing with help from TPG Sixth Street Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Durable Capital Partners, TCV, T. Rowe Price Associates, G Squared, Light Street Capital and Alta Park Capital. They combined to fund Toast, who has recently reached a $4.9B valuation.
Moving up the ladder, Toyota solely invested $462M into the driverless car startup, Pony.ai. Making another appearance, TCV led a $500M round of investing with the help of Ribbit Capital, DST Global, Lakestar and GP Bullhound to fund the British fintech startup, Revolut.
The largest deal of February was invested by Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. The group invested $700M into the mobile tech company, Grab.
These four mega-deals combined for roughly $2B and accounted for over 20% of all cash in February deals.
Wrapping Up
Not every company is going to be investing half a billion dollars per month. The final numbers for investment dollar distribution are as followed:
Heading out of February, there seems to be a very different, underlying feel that will quickly be felt by all. Moving into March, we hope to see the momentum of investor’s high activity to help propel us past any adversity.
In terms of February, we saw our collected record high for deals and close to $3B invested in just the last week of the month. This report looks to give startups and investor a quick, broad snapshot of the when’s and where’s over the last 29 days.
We appreciate you reading over February’s Monthly Report and would love any and all comments, suggestions and feedback!
