The Crunchbase Megadeals Leaderboard is a curated list of $100 million-plus VC funding rounds in 2023 to private companies based in the United States. While venture funding so far in 2023 has been considerably slower than it was in 2021 — a record year for venture capital investment — there are still some companies raising large rounds. This board is powered by Crunchbase’s comprehensive company data.
Last updated: Sept. 22, 2023
The Big Deals Of The Week
After a few weeks of really large raises and sometimes a half dozen or more companies making the list, this week was pretty quiet.
Just four companies joined the Megadeals Board and three did it with minimum $100 million raises.
What was usual this week was that AI again led the week. Three of the four startups are directly tied to AI, with the other surprisingly being an insurance tech company — just the third insurtech company to make the board this year.
New this week (9/16 to 9/22):
This board tracks announced venture funding deals of $100 million or more in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies.
Although most of the largest funding rounds of 2023 are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as deals are added to the Crunchbase dataset.
We consider VC funding deals to be both venture capital investment in private companies as well as private equity and growth rounds into companies that have previously raised venture funding.
Venture capital is a type of private equity typically invested into emerging startup companies that investors believe have high growth potential and will deliver outsized returns.
In exchange for equity stakes in the companies, venture capital firms and other investors provide capital to private companies that they believe have the potential for successful exits when they eventually go public or are acquired at a premium.
A VC funding deal typically has one or two lead investors, with other investment firms participating in the round by providing smaller stakes.
Crunchbase VC funding data comes from a variety of sources, including an active community of contributors, more than 4,000 global investment firms that submit deal data to Crunchbase, startup and venture capital news sources, and an in-house data team.
If you believe a U.S.-based startup funding deal of $100 million or more is missing from this page, please contact support@crunchbase.com.
Venture-funded startups are private companies that have received funding from venture capitalists.
These companies can range from very small, early-stage startups looking for seed-round funding, to large unicorn companies (private companies with a valuation of $1 billion-plus) that are on the verge of going public or being acquired.
Most venture-funded startups are in the technology industry, due to the sector’s potential for fast growth and outsized returns for investors. But companies in other industries such as retail and consumer goods also receive VC funding.
There are several stages of venture funding, starting with angel or pre-seed funding to the very youngest startups and ending with later-stage funding to established, pre-IPO startups.
Other sources of private-company funding include private equity or growth funding, debt financing and crowdfunding.
Read more about the different types of funding rounds and how they are classified in Crunchbase.
The largest venture funding deal to a U.S.-based startup in 2022 went to Epic Games, maker of the Fortnite video game series, with a $2 billion investment.
That deal was followed by SpaceX, an aviation and aerospace company, and Lineage Logistics, a warehousing and logistics company, which each raised $1.7 billion.
Palmer Luckey’s defense tech startup Anduril, and sports merchandise manufacturer and retailer Fanatics raised $1.5 billion apiece, and GM-backed autonomous car developer Cruise got $1.35 billion in a corporate round.
Outside of the U.S., the largest venture funding deals in 2022 went to Denmark-based energy trading house Danske Commodities ($3.7 billion); China-based electric-vehicle maker GAC Aion New Energy Automobile ($2.5 billion), and India’s Viacom18 Digital Ventures, an entertainment network, ($1.8 billion).
Some of the largest venture capital deals ever include a $2 billion round for Shanghai-based ByteDance, owner of TikTok, in a deal that was led by Sequoia Capital and KKR.
China-based fast-fashion giant Shein reportedly received a $2 billion funding round in May 2023 ahead of a potential IPO.
Other large venture funding deals include a $1.3 billion Series D funding for Silicon Valley-based cloud security firm Lacework, led by Sutter Hill Ventures, Altimeter Capital, D1 Capital Partners and Tiger Global Management.
There was also a $935 million Series E funding for San-Francisco-based logistics company Flexport, led by Andreessen Horowitz and MSD Partners.
Global venture funding in 2022 was $445 billion, a 35% decline year over year from the $681 billion invested in 2021, according to Crunchbase data.
Read our 2022 global funding report for more.
Yes, 2021 was a record year for global VC investment. More than $681 billion was invested in startups around the world in 2021, Crunchbase data shows.
Read our 2021 global funding report for more.
Yes, venture capital funding has slowed significantly since 2021.
Crunchbase data shows startups around the world received $681 billion from investors in 2021, a record year for VC funding.
Global venture funding in 2022 totaled $445 billion, a 35% decline year over year. VC funding fell in 2022 as numerous factors impacted the world economy, from rising interest rates to falling public company valuations, to economic uncertainty exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Even the most active startup investors pulled back on venture funding in 2022.
Although VC funding slowed in 2022 compared to 2021, venture investors still spent $100 billion more last year than the $342 billion they invested in 2020.
Venture capital funding to startups globally continued to fall in the first quarter of 2023, down 53% year over year to $76 billion.
Venture capital has not dried up. While venture capitalists aren’t investing as much of their capital as they were during the investment boom of 2021, investors still have plenty of capital available to deploy.
Venture investors had as much as $580 billion at their disposal at the end of 2022, but seem to be holding on to much of that cash.
However, there were some substantial funding deals made in the first quarter of 2023 as well as in the first half of Q2. It is believed that many late-stage venture capitalists are waiting for the IPO window to show more signs of life before making investments in ready-to-exit startups.
Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst led the most post-seed investments in the first quarter of 2023. While those round counts dropped when compared to those VCs tallies for 2021 and 2022, the next to rank on the list are Google Ventures and Altos Ventures, which actually led more round counts in comparison.
In 2023, VCs are looking to invest in promising startups that are well-positioned in growing sectors or to perform well when the public markets reopen.
Seed and early-stage funding took the lead in the total number of deals closed in the first quarter of 2023, with artificial intelligence taking in about 19% of the amount raised globally. AI-sector startups that raised seed rounds in Q1 include large language models company Fixie.ai, code platform CodiumAI and biotech MoleculeMind.
Late-stage and technology growth funding startups led all stages in dollar amounts in Q1 2023, raising $43 billion total. This is in large part due to the billions invested in ChatGPT designer OpenAI ($10 billion from Microsoft in a corporate round), and online payment startup Stripe’s $600 million Series H. Those two deals combined accounted for 22% of all venture capital raised, and 38% of late-stage financings in the first quarter of 2023.
Halfway through the second quarter of 2023, very large venture capital deals seem to have picked up some steam, with eight U.S.-based startups raising $100 million-plus rounds in a single week in mid-May.
Financial services, or fintech, led venture investment in both 2021 and 2022. Health care followed as the leading sector for VC investment in 2022.
There are more than 1,400 private companies valued as unicorn startups with valuations of $1 billion or more as of early 2023. They include ByteDance, fintech Ant Group, SpaceX, fashion and lifestyle e-retailer Shein, Stripe and e-commerce payment solutions platform Klarna.
All of our VC startup funding news and coverage of venture capital trends in 2023 can be found here. Articles about large deals and VC funding trends are also added to the current page as soon as they are published.
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