Friday, January 18, 2013
Southern California Venture Deals Hit $683.7M in Q4 2012
The latest numbers from the PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree report were released today, finding that a total of $683.7M was invested across Southern California in Q4 of 2012. That total was less than the $859.6M raised by companies in Q4 of 2011, and less than the $701.18M raised by companies in the region in Q3 of 2012. The funding brings Southern California's total 2012 investments to $3.2 billion in venture capital.
Los Angeles had a total of $311.25M in deals for the quarter, followed by Orange County with $197.8M, then San Diego, with $174.6M in funding. The largest deal for the quarter was for Santa Ana-based Health Essentials, a provider of post-acute care management serviecs, which raised $51.18M in the quarter. Other large deals included investments in Los Angeles-based Maker Studios, the online video firm, which raised $36.0M, Goleta-based MINDBODY, which develops software for managing yoga studios and other health businesses, with $35.0M and Cardiaq valve Technologies in Irvine, a developer of mitral heart valve replacements, which raised $37.3M.
In terms of industries, biotechonlogy actually led the region, with a total of $134.87M in funding; the majority of those funding deals were in the San Diego area. Second in terms of dollars was software, which totaled $107.6M in funding. Industrial/Energy deals--mostly clean technology deals--totalled $95.98M in the quarter.
The most active venture investors in Q4 in Southern California was GRP Partners, which made nine investments; the Pasadena Angels, with 8 deals; followed by Silicon valley's 500 Startups, which made 6 investments in the region. Karlin Ventures and Siemer Ventures both made five investments each.
Nationally, venture capital was down 3 percent in terms of dollars for the quarter, but up five percent in terms of deal volume over Q3; venture investors put $6.4 billion into 968 companies for Q4 of 2012. or the year, $26.5 billion was invested in 3,698 deals. PwC and the NVCA said that there were double digit decreases in investment dollars across most industries, and specifically the capital intensive clean technology and life sciences sectors, despite an increase in the software sector for the year.
Photo courtesy BigStock.com.