Kleiner Does 14 Deals in December, Sign of A Turnaround?
Venture capital investment picked up significantly in the fourth quarter, according to preliminary data from Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). The National Venture Capital Association and PwC won’t release their official MoneyTree Report (which is based on Thomson Reuters’ data) until this Friday, but the raw numbers in our database show a spike. The preliminary figures show that U.S.-based VCs pumped just over $17 billion into nearly 1,400 companies in Q4, making it the biggest quarter of 2009. By comparison, U.S.-based VCs invested $13.9 billion in 1,251 companies in Q3, $8.9 billion in 1,223 companies in Q2, and $7 billion in 1,130 companies in Q1, according to Thomson Reuters. The MoneyTree numbers will be a bit different, since they focus only on investments in U.S.-based companies (regardless of VC location). They also get scrubbed a bit by PwC before release. That said, I'd be surprised if MoneyTree shows a decline from Q3 to Q4. As I noted in a previous post about New Enterprise Associates, we’ve seen anecdotal evidence that at least some firms have become more active.
