A report from research firms CB Insights and KPMG released Wednesday shows that only five new unicorns were created during the first quarter of the year, less than half last year’s quarterly number.
Funding to technology companies has slowed considerably in recent months amid uncertainty about public markets and a cooling view toward private tech startups that some analysts feel are overvalued.
U.S. companies raised $14.8 billion in 1,035 deals from venture-capital firms in the first quarter of the year, a big drop from the $18.2 billion raised in the same quarter a year ago. This marks the third quarter in a row that investments have continued to drop.
The news is worse for late-stage funding rounds, generally raised by larger companies that have not gone public. The size of the average late-stage-deal in the first quarter was $21.5 million, down from $30 million in the fourth quarter of 2015.
A bright spot may be that funding levels did increase from the last quarter of 2015, when companies raised $14 billion.
©2016 The Seattle Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
