Streamline operational efficiency

I have mentioned it before: I don’t think AI will replace people, but people who don’t use AI will be replaced by those who do. It’s about being 10x more efficient utilizing technology. Sometimes 80% of what we actually need is automation tools and 20% can be actual AI. For example, when looking at customer support, well-trained chatbots can manage basic customer requests allowing the existing staff to handle 10x more tickets.

Adopting flexible work models is not just a trend; it’s a practical move. Encouraging some remote work can significantly cut down on office space costs. I do also believe in the personal connection that cannot be replaced with Slack or Zoom, however, a good mix can reduce costs without damaging quality of service. Keep in mind that most employees value such a working environment.

Optimize marketing and sales expenditures

Smart spending in marketing can yield big savings and better results.

Start with leveraging digital marketing channels such as SEO, content marketing and social media. These channels offer cost-effective ways to reach your audience. Tools like Google Analytics can track performance, helping you refine your strategies for maximum impact.

A/B testing is crucial for optimizing marketing efforts. Test different headlines, images and calls-to-action to find what resonates most with your audience, ensuring you get the best return on your investment. Additionally, customer segmentation helps tailor marketing strategies to those more likely to convert and spend more. Platforms like Salesforce 1 or HubSpot can streamline the process by targeting high-value segments effectively.

Consider account-based marketing for high-value prospects. This personalized approach can enhance engagement and conversion rates. Tools like Marketo can help execute these strategies efficiently. And always use data to allocate your budget where it will have the most impact, like email marketing and retargeting ads.

Enhance R&D and product development efficiency

Besides the basic agile development practices, try focusing on the core features requested by actual customers. It is crucial to validate market demand.

This approach saves resources and ensures you’re developing products that meet real customer needs. Engage directly with customers to gather insights and prioritize development efforts that deliver the most value. Learn to say no to customers who request custom features that are not in demand by a larger audience. Saying yes to any request to avoid customer churn will drain your resources with no justifiable return and will confuse your team about the product roadmap.

By implementing these strategies, tech companies can effectively reduce costs while maintaining high-quality standards, paving the way for sustainable growth and profitability. It’s all about working smarter and focusing on what truly drives value.

Itay Sagie is a strategic adviser to tech companies and investors, specializing in strategy, growth and M&A, a guest contributor to Crunchbase News, and a seasoned lecturer. You can connect with him on LinkedIn for further insights and discussions.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Summer is here and the time is right to maybe read a little less tech news and have some fun.

If that’s the case, you may have missed some intriguing capital raises this month. No worries, we have you covered with what caught our eye — starting with an eye-related startup.

Check your eyes

Usually when we talk about healthcare and AI, it relates to a biotech using the technology to refine therapeutics or help with the clinical trial process.

However, Eyebot locked up $6 million this month led by AlleyCorp and Ubiquity Ventures for a different business model. The Boston-based startup is looking to build out a network of AI-powered kiosks that provide 90-second vision exams

Yes, self-serve, rapid eye tests with no optometrist. Hey, we scan our own groceries, why not be your own eye doctor? The prescription the kiosk spits out actually is finalized by a teledoctor, but it still eliminates the need for a traditional eye appointment — which might be good considering the optometry labor shortage.

The startup is looking to roll out its kiosks — which look like old-school arcade machines — in places such as shopping centers and pharmacies in October in the Northeast before scaling next year.

Keep an eye out!

Voice clues

Now moving from seeing to speaking, Canary Speech is next on the list after it raised a $13 million Series A funding round led by Cortes Capital.

The Provo, Utah-based AI-powered voice biomarker healthtech startup uses patented vocal analysis to screen for mental health and neurological disorders.

Canary’s vocal biomarker tech can actually capture and analyze speech data within seconds to identify irregularities in behavioral and cognitive changes — besting current clinical screening standards and before experiencing noticeable symptoms for illnesses like anxiety, depression and dementia.

Canary’s ambient listening tools can not only assess a patient’s health, but also simultaneously evaluate physicians’ health — something more important than ever with the American Medical Association reporting that at the end of 2021 nearly 63% of physicians experienced symptoms of burnout.

AI for social media

Ever been lonely on social media and needed a friend?

Well, now you can just create one — or at least an AI one.

Butterflies.AI locked up a $4.8 million seed round led by Coatue In June. The Bellevue, Washington-based startup is creating a social media platform where humans and AI can “co-exist,” by letting users create AI friends.

The platform relies on AI models to help users create a new “friend” in just minutes. The AI persona’s are fully fleshed out with a profile, backstory and even emotions. They then can create and interact with other people and AI personas on the platform.

To be honest, we don’t completely get the idea. Isn’t the point of social media to argue with people who don’t think like you? Not to make/create friends.

Moving outside the echo chamber

How people digest news and where they get their information from is something that has evolved significantly in just the last decades.

Many news outlets are gone and newspapers are all but dead. People seem very happy to get their news delivered only in the way they want with the opinions they share.

That’s why news-reader startup Particle.News caught our eye this month. The Northern California-based startup is looking for partnerships with publishers where its AI wouldn’t merely summarize the news, but actually help the reader look deeper into stories and understand different angles by using artificial intelligence to summarize stories from a variety of publishers.

The business model received some notice from investors this month, locking up a $10.9 million Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

It also signed a deal with Reuters to be a source of news content for its service.

It’ll be interesting to see where this goes. Many are under the impression people just want to read the news in their own echo chamber. Perhaps there’s more to it.

It’s (not) a tire fire

We’ve all driven past a tire yard, with all that used rubber just creating an eyesore.

Well, LDCarbon locked up $28 million in a Series C to help deal with just that. The new round was led by Toyota’s growth fund, Woven Capital.

The Seoul, South Korea-based company has developed technologies to recycle end-of-life tires and other automotive parts into recovered carbon black and pyrolysis oil.

Those products, in turn, can be used to create new automotive parts and tires — and the cycle continues. The company is trying to solve  a major pollution issue that comes from incinerating old cars and tires — while also helping automakers hit sustainability goals and regulatory requirements.

The company is in the process of building Asia’s largest tire pyrolysis plant, and says its pyrolysis and material recovery process provides nearly 100% recovery of waste tires.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

The company raised $315 million in the offering, setting an initial valuation of around $2.67 billion. Shares are trading on Nasdaq under the symbol WBTN.

Although headquartered in Los Angeles, Webtoon has its roots in Korea. It’s majority-owned by South Korea’s Naver, which had a 71% pre-IPO stake, and Japan’s LY Corp., with a 29% stake.

Webtoon was launched in Korea nearly 20 years ago as the brainchild of its CEO, Junkoo Kim, then a search engineer at Naver. The founding vision was to create a platform for comic creators to reach a wider global audience.

Since then, Webtoon’s well-known format displaying art and text in a single continuous, vertical scroll has caught on in a big way. The company estimates that half of South Koreans visit the platform each month. It also has broad global reach, with an estimated 170 million monthly active users each month across more than 150 countries.

Between 2017 and 2023 it has paid out over $2.8 billion to creators who publish on its platform, Webtoon says. The average professional creator, it adds, is earning $48,000 a year and the top 100 are earning $1 million.

In the first quarter of this year, Webtoon had revenue of $327 million and net income of $6 million. In all of 2023, meanwhile, Webtoon had revenue of $1.28 billion, and posted a net loss of $145 million.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

That was the unsurprising finding from our latest data dive regarding investment in startups innovating around the metaverse, virtual reality and augmented reality.

The space, which was significantly buzzier a few years ago, has apparently lost its cachet with VCs. Dwindling investment comes on the heels of disappointing adoption for the gear and leading metaverse platforms.

Even Apple’s U.S. introduction earlier this year of the Vision Pro headset, marketed as a “spatial computing” device, didn’t produce a notable turn in sentiment. Demand for the $3,500 device is reportedly cooling, with Apple said to have cut its shipment forecast.

Back in startupland, the investment climate seems downright chilly. Per Crunchbase data, 1 roughly $464 million this year has gone into seed- through growth-stage funding rounds for companies tied to AR, VR and the metaverse. That puts 2024 on track for the lowest funding total in years.

Most of the startups that raised the biggest financings during the peak funding of 2021 have not closed new rounds since then. This includes headset maker Magic Leap and augmented reality game developer Niantic.

This year, while activity is muted, some sizable financings are still getting done.

So far in 2024, the largest AR-related round went to Rokid, a maker of augmented reality glasses that raised $70 million in a January financing. Redwood City, California-based Rokid primarily markets its products for workplace and industrial use cases, but also has a consumer offering.

Another good-sized financing went to Beijing-based Xreal, a maker of mixed-reality glasses that  raised $60 million in a January round at a value of $1 billion. The company pitches itself as a lower-cost competitor to Meta’s Quest and Apple’s Vision Pro.

Fading buzzwords

In addition to lackluster uptake for virtual- and mixed-reality gear and platforms, another factor behind seemingly slower funding tallies may be that the buzzwords themselves have fallen out of favor.

A few years ago, describing oneself as a metaverse company might have helped spike interest from venture investors. Today that’s no longer the case. Startups prefer, for example, to emphasize their artificial intelligence focus. Even Apple studiously avoided using the term metaverse in promoting Vision Pro, opting instead to talk up the device’s spatial computing capability.

Should adoption of virtual and mixed reality devices accelerate, venture investors will likely give the space renewed attention — and bigger checks. But perhaps by then, the ambitious startups will be using different buzzwords, like AI-enabled video simulations or spatial computing environments.

Related Crunchbase Pro list:

In areas from consumer products to apps to gaming, U.S. venture firms have raised fresh capital to invest in industries where funding levels remain drastically below peak. This, along with a modest uptick in first-quarter venture investment, indicates some sectors may have hit a cyclical low last year and should be heading higher.

To get a sense where newly allocated capital is going, we aggregated U.S. fundraising data for all new startup investment vehicles announced this year. We then looked at some of the sectors where investors plan to focus.

To a large degree, they will continue to fund hot themes of recent quarters, and AI in particular. However, we also saw a number of funds targeting areas that might be considered more out of favor. Let’s take a closer look.

The app economy

Most of us are more addicted to our apps than ever. Yet even so, venture investment in app startups has been tapering off for years.

Per Crunchbase data, funding for U.S. companies tied to the app economy peaked as a percentage of total investment back in 2016. In 2023, it hit its lowest point in a decade.

Against that backdrop, it’s interesting to see that Andreessen Horowitz has earmarked $1 billion out of the firm’s latest $7.2 billion fundraise to go toward an apps-focused fund. One expects AI will factor heavily into this strategy, given the firm’s stated enthusiasm for AI-driven companionship, wellness and creativity tools.

Gaming

After several slow quarters, funding to gaming startups has picked up this year, driven by a resurgence in early-stage dealmaking. New funds are also looking to tap into the momentum.

Earlier this month, Bitkraft Ventures, an early-stage gaming-focused investor, closed on $275 million for its third fund. And last week, Andreessen Horowitz announced it raised $600 million for a gaming-focused fund, as part of its massive total fundraise.

Consumer

Consumer-focused startups haven’t been an investor favorite of late. VCs have essentially abandoned the direct-to-consumer startup model, and they’re not backing a lot of consumer products startups either.

Maven Ventures, however, offered a bit of encouragement for the space. The Silicon Valley-based firm closed on $60 million this month for a fourth fund continuing its strategy to “invest in seed stage software startups tapping into new consumer behavior and trends.”

Andreessen Horowitz, meanwhile, is enthused about the intersection of AI and consumer-facing investment. A recent post notes that: “Consumer software companies are amongst the most valuable in the world (FAANG is all consumer) and were built during a major platform shift or product cycle. We expect this time to be no different.”

Web3

Startups related to Web3 — defined as those in the crypto and blockchain sectors — saw a slight increase in funding in Q1 of this year, per Crunchbase data. It was the first quarter-over-quarter rise for the space, once among the buzziest in the venture landscape, since the fourth quarter of 2021.

San Francisco-based Hack VC, a Web3-focused venture investor, landed $150 million for a new fund in February. It’s been investing busily, participating in more than a dozen known rounds this year, per Crunchbase data.

Deals are also getting done at high valuations. In March, for instance, three global crypto-related companies crossed the $1 billion valuation threshold to clinch unicorn status: Berachain, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain for financial applications, Io.net, a blockchain service to sell excess GPUs, and Polyhedra Network, a Web3 infrastructure company.

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is among the sectors that saw U.S. funding perk up in Q1, after hitting a multiyear low two quarters earlier. Rounds in the hundreds of millions are happening again, per Crunchbase data, as is talk around potential exits for some of the more heavily funded players in the space.

Just in time for the rebound, San Francisco-based Ballistic Ventures announced in March that it has raised $360 million for an oversubscribed second fund that will invest exclusively in cybersecurity.

What was out is in again (with a twist of AI)

Rising interest and investment in sectors that hit cyclical lows last year doesn’t mean venture investors are turning away from their recent favorite investment theme: AI. Rather, there’s a vast array of applications for artificial intelligence in almost any industry.

Still, it’s reassuring to see startup sectors bouncing back, and to see funds with stores of capital dedicated to these spaces.

Related Crunchbase Pro lists:

• ​​Funding To VC-Backed Web3 Startups
• Cybersecurity Funding

Related reading:

• The Mixed State Of Startup Funding In 2024, In 11 Charts
• Investors Re-Engage With Gaming Startups
• Web3 Venture Funding Bounces Back Slightly From Last Year’s Lows
• Cybersecurity Funding Shows Resilience In Q1

Illustration: Dom Guzman

This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding rounds here.

The week saw another five startups lock up rounds of $100 million or more. While the week was a little slower than last, it still is a strong showing for larger, big-money rounds. Biotech took center stage, notching three of the top four rounds. 

1. Obsidian Therapeutics, $161M, biotech: It was another big week for biotech startups raising huge sums of cash. This week, Obsidian Therapeutics leads the way. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company locked up a $160.5 million Series C financing led by new investor Wellington Management. Obsidian is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing engineered cell and gene therapies. The new cash will be used to further its tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte program.

2. Flip, $144M, social media: Social commerce startup Flip locked up $144 million in new cash led by Streamlined Ventures in a deal that values the company at more than $1 billion. It also included a $50 million investment from advertising software firm AppLovin. The Los Angeles-based startup is a marketplace that offers video reviews. Reviewers get paid based on views and product sales and Flip gets a commission on sales and making reviews more visible. Founded in 2019, the company has raised nearly $239 million, per Crunchbase.

3. Alterome Therapeutics, $132M, biotech: Oncology biotech Alterome Therapeutics raised a $132 million Series B led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives. Alterome says its machine learning platform for drug discovery — Kraken — is helping it advance a pipeline of small molecule therapies targeting a spectrum of oncogenic targets. The company has focused on approaches designed to specifically target cancer cells over normal cells. Founded in 2021, the company has raised $231 million, per Crunchbase.

4. Diagonal Therapeutics, $128M, biotech: Diagonal Therapeutics, which is discovering and developing agonist antibodies to fight illness, is the next biotech on the list. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm launched this week with a $128 million Series A co-led by BVF Partners and Atlas Venture. The firm’s lead program is for the treatment of hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, a severely debilitating bleeding disorder with limited therapeutic options.

5. Aerospike, $109M, database: Real-time NoSQL database management system Aerospike nabbed a nine-figure round this week, closing a $109 million investment led by Sumeru Equity Partners. The company will use the fresh cash to meet increasing demand for databases that can scale thanks to the rapid adoption of AI. Founded in 2009, the Mountain View, California-based startup has raised $241 million, per Crunchbase.

6. Alsym Energy, $78M, energy: Woburn, Massachusetts-based Alsym Energy, a developer of nonflammable rechargeable batteries, announced a $78 million funding round co-led by Tata Limited — a subsidiary of Tata Sons — and General Catalyst. Founded in 2015, the company has raised $110 million, per Crunchbase.

7. SiMa.ai, $70M, semiconductor: San Jose, California-based semiconductor startup SiMa.ai raised $70 million led by Maverick Capital. Founded in 2018, the company has raised $330 million, per Crunchbase.

8. Torus, $67M, energy: South Salt Lake City, Utah-based Torus, which designs and manufactures energy storage and management products, closed a $67 million round — consisting of new equity, conversion of outstanding notes and a loan facility — led by Origin Ventures. This is the first announced round for the company founded in 2021, per Crunchbase.

9. Binx Health, $65M, healthcare: Boston-based Binx Health, a diagnostic testing device for sexually transmitted diseases for healthcare practices and hospitals, says it provides a result within 30 minutes rather than 10 days, which leads to immediate treatment. The company raised a $65 million Series F funding including debt. The funding was led by Hildred Capital with participation from EQT Life Sciences.

10. Homebase, $60M, human resources: San Francisco-based Homebase, a human resources and team management app, locked up a $60 million Series D led by L Catterton Growth. Founded in 2014, the company has raised $189 million, per Crunchbase.

Big global deals

In a rarity, the second-biggest round of the week went to a French startup.

• Paris-based Pigment, a business forecasting platform, raised a $145 million venture round.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of March 30 to April 5. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

The IPO is a long time coming for San Francisco-based Reddit. The company, known for its lively online communities and colorful discussion threads, was co-founded by CEO Steve Huffman and venture investor Alexis Ohanian more than 18 years ago.

Reddit’s initial public offering is being closely watched for a number of reasons. Its IPO is the first from a social media company since Pinterest’s debut in 2019. Startup investors and entrepreneurs are also hoping the IPO, which follows a prolonged drought for new tech offerings, could help kickstart the IPO market.

Certainly this has been an encouraging week for those hoping to pick up the IPO pace. A day before Reddit’s debut, Astera Labs, a developer of data center connectivity technology with use cases in generative AI, closed up more than 72% in first-day trading after pricing shares above the projected range.

Reddit, which is trading on NYSE under the ticker symbol RDDT, said it had an initial valuation of $6.4 billion after pricing shares at $34 each late Wednesday. Its valuation at the end of its first day of trading is around $7 billion.

Notably, in an unusual move, the company also offered 74,000 of its active moderators and users the opportunity to purchase stock at that price point, in order to give them access to some upside should the stock increase over time. Company CFO Drew Vollero told Axios that “tens of thousands” of Reddit users, known as Redditors, bought into the IPO.

“We set aside 8% of the shares so that our moderators and passionate users can be owners … It’s been good to have some pop for them on Day 1 because that’s different from what’s happened with some other companies,” he said.

Media company Advance Publications, owner of magazine publisher Condé Nast among other properties, was the largest shareholder in Reddit ahead of its IPO, with a 30.1% ownership of the company, according to securities filings. Several other shareholders, including Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent, Fidelity and entrepreneur and investor Sam Altman, (now CEO of OpenAI) also held large stakes.

— Gené Teare contributed to this article.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Reddit’s IPO will be closely watched for a number of reasons. Its IPO is the first from a social media company since Pinterest’s debut in 2019. Startup investors and entrepreneurs are also hoping the IPO, which follows a prolonged drought for new tech offerings, could help kickstart the IPO market again. 

Reddit will trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol RDDT. Its targeted share price is $31 to $34 at a value up to $6.4 billion upon listing. 

In an unusual move, the company is offering 74,000 of its active moderators and users the opportunity to purchase stock at the price set the day before the company goes public, in order to give them access to some upside should the stock increase over time.  

Reddit’s biggest shareholders

Reddit was founded in the summer of 2005, as part of the first Y Combinator accelerator class, alongside only eight other companies. 

It came about in the Web 2.0 era, a period defined by the birth of user-generated content platforms that also birthed Facebook (now Meta), Twitter (now X) and YouTube. 

Within 18 months of Reddit’s founding, media company Advance Publications, owner of magazine publisher Condé Nast among other properties, acquired the startup for $10 million. 

Advance remains the largest shareholder in Reddit, with a 30.1% ownership of the company, according to securities filings. 

Other leading shareholders include investors who have led fundings in Reddit since 2014: 

• Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent led Reddit’s Series D of $300 million in 2019 and now owns 11% of the company. 
• Fidelity led Reddit’s $420 million Series F, valued at $10 billion. The firm, which also invested in earlier rounds, now owns 9.5% of Reddit.
• Entrepreneur and investor Sam Altman, now CEO of OpenAI, led Reddit’s Series B of $50 million in 2014. His investment properties still own 8.7%, according to filings.
• Quiet Capital and Tacit Capital combined own 6.8% and first invested in the Series C round. 
• Vy Capital led Reddit’s Series E of $368 million in 2021 and now owns 5.1%. 

Venture firms Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital have also both invested in Reddit, but do not own more than 5%, according to filings. 

By the numbers: Funding, revenue and growth

Reddit has raised more than $1.3 billion from investors since its founding, according to Crunchbase.

Its 2023 revenues totaled $804 million, up 21% year over year, according to filings. On its IPO roadshow, the company indicated it expects to grow around the same proportion in 2024. A new revenue stream inked in January includes a $60 million a year deal for three years with Google to train AI models. 

On Friday, the company said in filings that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has opened an inquiry into its AI data licensing business, which the company has said could bring in more than $200 million in revenue over the next few years.

Reddit hosts approximately 100,000 forums, called subreddits, on niche to broad topics, all managed by its community of users. The platform gained more mainstream attention for its r/wallstreetbets subreddit and that forum’s role in the “meme stock” phenomenon characterized by the GameStop trading flurry in 2021. 

The site had an average 73 million daily active users in the fourth quarter of 2023, up 27% over the previous year, according to its filings, and user growth has increased in the last two quarters. Still, the company has run at a loss each year.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

From inaccuracy-laden AI-generated verbiage to deliberate deepfakes and disinformation,  conducting research isn’t what it used to be. Even keeping up with the news now usually entails wading through reams of misleading or outright false content. 

We’re fed up. And increasingly, our frustrations are inspiring startup investors to back businesses aimed at weeding out misinformation. 

It’s not a new phenomenon. A year ago, we wrote about funded startups working on ways to combat disinformation and misinformation, some of which had raised quite a bit of capital. Since then, however, money has continued to pour into the space.

AI tools to fight AI falsehoods

To get a sense of what investors are into, we put together a list of 16 companies, most of which last raised financing in the past year. To date, the selected startups have collectively raised more than $250 million.

Overall, it’s a group heavily focused on artificial intelligence, reflecting the growing role of AI in both creating and combating misinformation. It’s also a pretty youthful cohort, with the majority of funding going to seed and early stage rounds.

Notably, several larger financings closed just this year. In February, for instance, Clarity, a provider of software to identify and protect against harmful deepfakes and AI-generated synthetic media, picked up $16 million in a seed funding round. Bessemer Venture Partners and Walden Catalyst led the financing for the New York-based company, which was founded less than two years ago.

A few weeks earlier, Reken, a stealthy startup founded by a former head of Google’s product trust and safety group, landed $10 million in a seed round. Greycroft and FPV Ventures led the investment in the San Francisco company, which is building a platform to protect against generative AI threats. 

In a similar vein, Tel Aviv-based Cyabra, a self-described social threat intelligence provider, announced in January that it had closed a $5.7 million Series A extension round (and also added former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to its board of directors.) And just last week, Los Angeles-based PeakMetrics, a developer of tools for organizations to find and respond quickly to damaging social media content, picked up $3 million in seed funding.

Reputational damage control

For now, it’s common to see business models based on protecting reputations of well-known brands, businesses, and individuals. More than half the startups on our list are pursuing this strategy to some extent. 

This looks at first glance like a sensible approach. Founders, of course, raise money by convincing investors they can generate revenue. To do this, they have to make a case that those who stand to lose the most money from false online narratives — i.e. businesses and brands — will benefit from buying their products. 

Looking ahead, however, it would also be gratifying to see more technologies for reducing the scourge of online falsehoods reach audiences that aren’t directly paying for their software. This would be particularly helpful for AI-generated content, which we expect to grow at exponential rates and, as of yet, is not known for its accuracy.

Related Crunchbase Pro list:

• Funded Companies Fighting Disinformation

Illustration: Dom Guzman

It may be the year’s shortest month, but that didn’t mean Andreessen Horowitz didn’t have time for a big month.

For the second straight month, the Menlo Park, California-based investing giant led the way among all investors, sealing 15 funding deals with U.S.-based startups, per Crunchbase data.

In fact, Andreessen Horowitz more than doubled the number of deals the two second-place firms — GV and Alumni Ventures — consummated last month.

Let’s dive into the busiest firms from February.

Andreessen Horowitz, 15 deals

Andreessen Horowitz ramped up its investment pace even from January, when the firm completed 11 deals involving U.S.-based startups.

Last month, a16z seemed to have a thing for healthcare and biotech. The firm took part in a $70 million Series B for San Francisco-based Ambience Healthcare, a $170 million Series D for Richmond, California-based BioAge Labs and a huge $254 million round for South San Francisco-based blood-test developer Freenome.

Of course, a16z already has been in the news this month as it is reportedly “weeks away” from closing on as much as $7 billion in new funds.

We’ll see next month if a16z can make it three-for-three this year when it comes to being the leading monthly investor.

Alumni Ventures, 7 deals

For the second consecutive month, Alumni increased the number of venture deals in U.S.-based startups it took part in.

In February, the New Hampshire-based firm completed seven deals which ran the gamut from AI to healthcare to finance to VR.

For instance, the firm participated in a $21 million Series B for New York-based Ezra AI, which provides early cancer detection, and a $20 million Series A for Miami-based StatusPro, the creator of virtual reality simulation gaming franchise, NFL PRO ERA (which also made our list of interesting rounds for the month).

GV, 7 deals

However, the StatusPro round was actually led by the next firm on our list: GV.

GV, the investment arm of Alphabet, took part in the most deals involving U.S.-based startups it has in any month since last June. Similar to Alumni, it also has increased deal flow for the last two months after doing just three deals in December.

The StatusPro deal was the largest round GV led all month, but it also took the lead in a $9.3 million seed round for Los Altos, California-based Glass Imaging. The startup uses artificial intelligence to extract “the full image quality potential” from smartphone cameras by reversing “lens aberrations and sensor imperfections.”

GV also participated in a big $75 million Series A for asthma-focused Areteia Therapeutics.

Also notable:

• Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners both came in next on the list with a half-dozen deals apiece.
• Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sands Capital Ventures, led the way in terms of firms leading or co-leading rounds. The trio each led or co-led three deals.
• Disney actually led the list for rounds led or co-led with the highest dollar amounts for February on the heels of its big $1.5 billion deal with Epic Games to get more of its characters and properties exposure in the gaming world. Lightspeed came in next, with the three deals it led or co-led totaling $414 million.
• Y Combinator once again was the top investing incubator and accelerator in February with 15 deals.

Methodology

This is a list of investors which took part in the most rounds involving U.S.-based startups. It does not include incubators or accelerators due to the fluctuations their investment numbers can have.

Related reading:

• Most-Active US Investors: Andreessen Horowitz And Sequoia Lead Slow Start To Year
• A16z Tops Active Investor Ranks In Slow 2023

Illustration: Dom Guzman