TLDR
– Global startup funding for January 2024 reached close to $22 billion, slightly below the monthly average for 2023.
– Funding in January was up from December 2023, but it was the weakest month for venture investment last year.
By all accounts, venture funding will continue to be constrained in 2024 unless the IPO market bursts open with a lineup of companies that slowed their exit plans over the past two years. The subdued funding climate was evident in January. Global startup funding for the first month of the year reached close to $22 billion — slightly below the monthly average for 2023 — according to an analysis of Crunchbase data. Funding in January was up from December 2023, but that was the weakest month for venture investment last year. A year-over-year comparison for the month of January shows funding last month fell in large part due to the single largest funding of 2023: Microsoft’s commitment of $10 billion to OpenAI a year earlier. Late-stage funding in January topped $10 billion, while early stage came in at around $9.4 billion and seed around $2 billion. Early- and late-stage funding were both up month over month with large rounds in energy, delivery, semiconductors, quantum and logistics. Around $2.1 billion — or 10% — of January’s startup funding went to the AI sector. Large rounds in AI were raised by robotics, customer experience, voice synthesis and AI architecture companies.
