For many young companies, announcing a capital raise is an early crowning achievement and for some, can be the first business milestone that brings an organization out of stealth. For more established companies, it’s a reinforcement of your company’s success and vision for what comes next. These tech funding PR campaigns can help drive multiple initiatives – signaling your official entrance to the market; creating brand and product buzz in front of industry partners and potential talent; and serving as important collateral for outbound sales and marketing efforts. While the VC environment has been tougher to crack for many companies over the past 12 months, it appears checkbooks are once again starting to warm up, as evidenced by the increase in tech funding PR stories we’re seeing, particularly across AI, climate tech, and B2B tech. Here are some of the latest tech funding PR stories that got media coverage over the last couple of weeks:
AI deals lift US venture capital funding to highest level in two years, data shows – Reuters
“After reaching a record high $97.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, U.S. VC funding had been steadily declining. It hit a recent low of $35.4 billion in the second quarter of 2023, amid a high interest-rate environment and a sluggish exit market. The recent influx of capital into AI startups has reversed the downward trend, as investors double down on AI foundation model companies as well as applications from code generation to productivity tools.”
Climate Tech Is No Longer Weathering Venture’s Slump – Wall Street Journal
“Funding for growth deals declined 33% in the first half, while the number of growth deals dropped 13%, compared with the same period last year, according to CTVC. That is problematic for a sector where many companies funded a few years are just hitting the stage during which they would need growth capital. Early-stage deal and funding totals also declined.
The subgroup of climate-tech companies that are likely to struggle the most in the current environment are those that need money to build new manufacturing facilities. Debt costs are increasing at a time of high interest rates. At the same time, demand is slumping.
Several high-profile climate-tech companies, such as hydrogen aviation company Universal Hydrogen and carbon-removal startup Running Tide, shut down this year. Some cited a lack of demand, CTVC noted in its report.”
Wealth Tech Startup for Doctors Raises $200 Million, Eyes M&A – Bloomberg
“Earned Wealth, a startup that advises doctors on their professional and personal finances, has raised $200 million in new money with plans to pursue acquisitions.
The financing was led by Summit Partners and Silversmith Capital Partners alongside existing investors Juxtapose, Hudson Structured Capital Management and Breyer Capital, according to a statement reviewed by Bloomberg News. The company didn’t disclose its valuation in the round.
Earned Wealth, founded in 2021, offers medical professionals advice on financial planning, tax planning, wealth management and investing on one interconnected platform. The company raised about $18 million in a 2023 funding round that valued it at close to $40 million, according to data provider PitchBook.”
Japanese Human Resources Tech Startup SmartHR Raises $140 Million Led By KKR And OTPP – Forbes
“Japanese human resources tech startup SmartHR has raised a $140 million Series E round led by KKR and Teachers’ Venture Growth, the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
The Series E infusion included participation from existing investors World Innovation Lab (a backer of Canva) and Light Street Capital (portfolio companies include Unity), SmartHR said in a statement on Monday. The statement did not disclose a valuation for the round.
SmartHR previously raised a $142.5 million Series D at a valuation of $1.6 billion from investors including Greyhound Capital, a backer of Korean billionaire Lee Seung-gun‘s Viva Republica; Light Street Capital; Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Sequoia’s public/private crossover fund; and Whale Rock Capital, a backer of Databricks.”
Here’s the full list of 28 US AI startups that have raised $100M or more in 2024 – TechCrunch
“In the first half of 2024 alone, more than $35.5 billion was invested into AI startups globally, recent Crunchbase data found. Five of the six venture rounds of more than $1 billion raised in the first half of 2024 were raised by AI companies.
Many other AI startups were able to raise mega-rounds of more than $100 million. U.S. startups raised two of the billion-dollar rounds in the first half of this year and nearly two-thirds, 64%, of the mega-rounds.”
Belgian AI Startup LegalFly Secures $16.3 Million In Series A, Keeps the Legal Tech Funding Streak Hot – Law
LegalFly, a one-year-old Belgian startup, announced on Monday that it had secured €15 million ($16.3 million) in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Notion Capital, with participation from Redalpine and Fortino Capital, and is meant to expand LegalFly’s generative AI-powered offerings focused on corporate legal teams and legal services, according to the press release. The company hopes to ‘triple’ its current team by the end of 2024, as well as to fortify its security infrastructure, according to the release.
LegalFly is far from the only legal tech company seeing interest from investors. The last few weeks alone have seen a slew of funding rounds ranging from one end of the scale to the other. On July 10, law firm partner-founded cybersecurity startup Cytactic announced a $16 million seed round and timekeeping startup PointOne a $3.3 million seed round. Earlier in July, Hebbia raised $130 million in a Series B round. In June, Clearbrief announced a $4 million round, Wordsmith raised $5 million in seed funding, Ruli raised $2.2 million in a pre-seed round, and Hona raised $9.5 million in a Series A round.
VC funding for New York startups on pace to exceed 2023 – Crain’s New York Business
VC funding in New York hit $7.72 billion in Q2, a 43% increase from the $5.4 billion raised in Q1. The year-to-date total is now $13.1 billion, up 74% from the same point in 2023. The rebound is being largely led by deals in SaaS, or software as a service, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other emerging tech subsectors, the report said.
Many early-stage startups in New York struggled to raise money in late 2022 and 2023. The stagnant IPO market was partly to blame. Stubbornly high interest rates, an unpredictable public market, and an aggressive regulatory environment stifled activity. The hesitancy to go public led to a trickle-down effect on the local tech ecosystem as a lack of IPOs or mergers limited the flow of capital, and highly skilled tech employees who were tied up in equity couldn’t move forward in their careers or start new companies.
Goldman, Google Back Legal Tech in $1 Billion Funding Rounds – Bloomberg Law
Legal software provider Clio clinched a $3 billion valuation in a funding round that brings in Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Alphabet Inc.’s venture arm as new investors. Headquartered in a suburb of Vancouver, the company raised $900 million in a Series F round led by venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, according to a statement Tuesday. New Enterprise Co-CEO Tony Florence has joined Clio’s board.
The software firm, which operates as Clio but has a corporate name of Themis Solutions Inc., said it has gained momentum since raising $110 million in a previous round in April 2021 at a $1.6 billion valuation. ‘We saw growth just explode over the course of the last two years,’ Newton said in an interview on BNN Bloomberg Television, leading to a near-doubling of the valuation.
Climate Tech Investors Aren’t Too Worried About Trump – Heatmap News
A Trump presidency puts $1 trillion in overall energy investments at risk, according to a May report from energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Much of this depends on whether Trump would take a scalpel or a hammer to IRA incentives, which is difficult to predict. Republican rhetoric is often extreme — gut the IRA, gut the Environmental Protection Agency, maximize fossil fuel production. If actions align with words, climate tech investors ought to have plenty of reasons to be fearful, as the startups they support often owe part of their success to government grants and incentives.
Even if government does pull way back, Muldoon told me that other sources of funding could step in — universities, private research organizations, family offices and other forms of philanthropic dollars might turn to support climate tech. Still though, he admits that “it doesn’t necessarily fill the void.”
Not every startup is AI-related. Here’s an analysis of where venture capital funding is actually going – Fast Company
But in reality, over the past two months, AI companies accounted for only about 20% of all startup funding rounds of Series B and earlier, according to a Fast Company analysis of Crunchbase data. The amount of venture capital they attracted was disproportionately higher (about 37% of the total), but that number drops back down to relative parity once we exclude xAI’s anomalously massive Series B round. After discounting that round, AI companies accounted for about 24% of all funding dollars.
And ironically, some investors are likely spooked by the sheer amount of money being poured into generative AI technology by behemoths like Microsoft that make the prospect of betting on a huge winner less likely. ‘If I’m a VC and I see a large tech company spending billions or double-digit billions internally and on an advanced AI startup, I look very closely at, what’s the [path to success] for the startup opportunities we have?’ he says. ‘Because the last thing we want is to invest in generative AI because it’s generative AI, and invest in the losers that are being blown out of the water by the winners.’
Over $50 Billion Flow to Climate-Tech Startups in a Stormy Year – BloombergNEF
Climate-tech companies raised $51 billion in venture capital and private equity funding across more than a thousand deals tracked by BloombergNEF last year. Though this was 12% lower than 2022, the slide was a fraction of the 35% reported for all startups by Pitchbook. Most of the funding went to low-carbon energy and low-carbon transport companies.
Regionally, the US continued to be the largest market for climate-tech in 2023, which marked one year since the passage of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act or IRA. A total of $14.6 billion was allocated to startups in the region – almost $3 billion more than the second largest market of Mainland China. Some 300 deals were completed by American clean-tech companies, more than double that of the next largest market.
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***Tech funding PR news roundup guest post from FischTank PR interns Baylee Matthews and Uju Ike***
