According to data from Crunchbase, global startup funding increased 16% in Q2 due to an increase in mega-rounds, and the increase was unsurprisingly driven by the AI sector: funding into AI companies accounted for 30% of total investments, doubling quarter-over-quarter to $24 billion.
On today's TechCrunch Equity podcast, Mary Ann talks numbers with Gené Teare, Senior Data Editor for Crunchbase and Crunchbase News. Teare is a leading analyst of the global venture capital market and played a key role at Crunchbase since its inception and remains one of the company's longest-tenured staffers.
“I was really surprised that AI revenue doubled six quarters after the launch of Chat GPT,” Teare said. “I think part of it is that in the venture world, things take time to take hold.”
There were also signs of an increase in larger M&A deals in the second quarter, providing much-needed liquidity as the IPO market remains sluggish.
“The M&A environment has certainly strengthened relative to 2022,” Tear said. “There's a lot of hope that we'll see a much larger uptick in M&A, but we're not seeing that yet, in part because of the price drop. There are a lot of companies that will realise they can't go public in the next three to five years. So I think things are improving, but not as much as a lot of people in the bench community would have hoped or expected.”
Equity will be back on Friday with our weekly news roundup, come back again!
Just a few final notes: We invited Jenne onto the show because we wanted to get some valuable insight into the venture capital market, and we know she's great on the subject. Mary Ann I worked with her at Crunchbase for years. During her tenure at Crunchbase, she was compensated in part through stock options and also holds a small amount of stock in Crunchbase itself. At Equity, we try our best to cite the best data sources for the topics we cover. That means we use Crunchbase data as well as information from our competitors PitchBook and CB Insights. For example, last year we invited a regular PitchBook customer onto the show to discuss their Q2 2023 results. On the merits of the show alone, we think we've created the best show possible, but we do want to point out some technical overlaps at the outset.
Equity is TechCrunch's flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo and posted every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and allcasts.
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