Following a record-breaking second quarter, venture capitalists around the world stayed busy in Q3, investing astronomical sums into global startups.
Since the back half of 2020 kicked off and the venture capital and startup worlds discovered that COVID and its related economic impacts were largely set to miss the upstart technology market, investors have been busy stuffing ever-larger amounts of cash into new companies around the world. The acceleration of capital deployment has generated more unicorns, more mega-rounds and simply more available dollars than ever before in the history of startups.
The deluge of record venture capital data points can be difficult to put into context at times. In the coming weeks, TechCrunch will explore the global Q3 venture capital market’s results in detail, by business genre (fintech, edtech, etc.) and geography, along with notes on stage-by-stage data and more.
Today, however, we’re taking a high-level look. Thanks to a fresh report from CB Insights, we have a sheaf of numbers to unpack. To start, we’re looking at the third quarter from four perspectives: Alex will look at aggregate numbers, Mary Ann will provide an overview of unicorn results, Anna is looking into geographic outliers and Ryan has notes on fintech.
Lots to come, but this is the first look. Let’s get into the data!
All-time record venture capital activity
After some $156 billion was invested into global startups in the second quarter, the third quarter managed to just top the record by $2 billion, as investors put $158 billion to work in the last three months. The numbers are effectively a tie, meaning that we’ve just lived through the two strongest periods for investment into private companies in the history of startups.
This year is looking simply superlative.