PitchBook News - 2022 VC data is here

Risk, or at least the perceived risk of venture, increased substantially in 2022.

That caused many investors to rethink their approach, and the nontraditional firms that boosted top-line deal value trends over the past few years drastically slowed capital deployment into the VC market.

Broadly speaking, however, 2022 looked much less menacing than the narrative suggests.

Venture investors still deployed $238.3 billion. US-based VC funds raised a record $162.6 billion. Even as deal value declined each quarter, with Q4's figure falling back to pre-pandemic norms, our estimates put deal count for the final period of the year at just under 4,000, which is the most active quarter outside of the past two years.

We do believe the VC market will continue cooling. Deal count will likely slow further, and dry powder—no matter the amount—will only help the market as long as firms don't stash it away in hopes of an eventual rebound.

2023, regardless of if or when a recession occurs, will be challenging for the venture market, as companies and investors alike realign their strategies and expectations of what VC truly is.

2021 was an outlier. 2022 was carried by momentum. 2023 may be the fine-tuning of the new market structure.

But until we see what 2023 holds, you can access the key underlying datasets from our upcoming PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, which releases on January 12.

Click to download the free data and summary PDF.