Venture funding rebounded in May to succeed in $31 billion, the highest monthly result this 12 months. Investments are up over 40% month-on-month and 29% year-on-year, with AI being the leading sector that has raised the most funds.
This total was fueled by a billion-dollar financing wave in which $11 billion – or greater than a third of the capital raised last month – was invested in six firms in rounds valued at least $1 billion. This was the highest billion-dollar funding figure in a single month since the start of the enterprise capital slowdown in 2022.
Elon Musk‘S xAI raised the largest funds, $6 billion price $24 billion. There have also been rounds price billions of dollars CoreWeave, Wayve, Abound, AI scales AND Wizard. Investors who led or co-led these funds include: Partners of the Lightspeed enterprise, Andreessen Horowitz, Speed up AND GSR projects on the enterprise side. Growth investors Develop capital, Coat AND SoftBank he also led the innings.
AI leads
Overall, AI firms raised 40% of enterprise funding in May, investing $12.5 billion in greater than 250 firms, in line with an evaluation Crunch Base data. xAI collected almost half of this amount.
Other leading sectors included healthcare and biotech firms, which raised $5.1 billion, and financial services firms, which raised $3.9 billion last month.
As of the end of May, artificial intelligence, healthcare and biotech are the leading sectors so far this 12 months, with each having raised roughly $27 billion in funding.
Are mergers and acquisitions markets coming back into favor?
Last month, a record five venture-backed firms were acquired for greater than $1 billion. Three of them are biotechnology firms OkoBiotech, Hello, Bio AND Mariana Oncologist. In the enterprise software sector hurry upmachine identity security company and revision Committeecloud compliance management software providers.
Waiting for something
An increase in funding in May does not mean an increase in enterprise capital funding in future months. In today’s slower funding environment, funding tends to fluctuate from month to month, with large funding being raised primarily by AI firms or late-stage unicorns.
Over the past 12 months, May 2024 was not the month with the highest volume of enterprise funding. It peaked at $35 billion in September 2023, of which $9 billion was raised in funds of $1 billion or more across 4 firms. In the following months, total funding declined by at least $10 billion in comparison with the monthly funding peak in 2023.
Methodology
The data in this report comes directly from Crunchbase and is based on reported data. The data provided is as of June 4, 2024.
Please note that data transfer delays are most noticeable in the earliest stages of a enterprise, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of the quarter/12 months.
Industries on Crunchbase are not exclusive. An organization may operate in greater than one industry and in greater than one industry group.
Please note that every one financing amounts are in US dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currency echange to U.S. dollars at the spot rate in effect on the date financing rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if these events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, currency transactions are converted at the historical spot price.
Glossary of financing terms
As of January 2023, we have modified the way we include corporate financing rounds in our reports. Corporate rounds are only included when a company has raised seed financing as a part of a series enterprise financing round.
Seeds and Angels consist of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also covers enterprise rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding, and convertible notes valued at $3 million (USD or converted USD equivalent) or less.
The early stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, in addition to other forms of rounds. Crunchbase includes enterprise rounds of unknown series, corporate ventures and other rounds above $3 million and those valued lower than or equal to $15 million.
The Late Stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E, and later lettered expedition rounds following the “Series [Letter]” Naming convention. Also included are enterprise rounds of unknown series, corporate ventures, and other rounds valued over $15 million.
A technology development is a private equity round led by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (Basically any round from the pre-defined stages.)