Skip to main content
Oct 8, 2021 - Economy & Business

Q3 global venture capital funding hits record high

Dan Primack
Illustration of stacks of money progressively getting larger with the last one so tall that it goes off screen.

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Global venture capital funding hit an all-time record in Q3, topping $158 billion, per a report from CB Insights.

Driving the news: That's more than double the Q3 2020 total, and more than any full-year totals before 2018. Or, put another way, startups raised more in three months of 2021 than during the entire dotcom boom years of 1999 or 2000.

  • Mega-rounds (of $100 million or more) are driving the surge, accounting for just 4% of total deals but 58% of dollar volume.
  • The median late-stage deal valuation hit $1.1 billion, more than the 2020 median. This means the median late-stage deal now creates a unicorn (also, one-third of new unicorns are in fintech).
  • The quarter's busiest firm in Q3 wasn't Tiger Global or Insight Partners. It was Sequoia Capital China, averaging an insane 1.5 deals per day.
Go deeper