In Japan, corporate-backed funding rounds increased by 80%, while in India they increased by 45% and in Israel they decreased by 38%.
GCV data shows that in the third quarter of 2024, business investment increased in Japan, India and the United States, but decreased in Israel and China.
The biggest increase was in Japan, which saw an 80% increase from 88 rounds in the third quarter of last year to 158 rounds in the third quarter of 2024. The largest Japanese-based company investment in the third quarter was Sakana AI, which secured $200 million. Series Round from backers including IT companies NEC and Fujitsu, life insurance company Dai-ichi Life, trading company Itochu Corporation, telecommunications company KDDI, and financial companies Nomura Holdings and NVIDIA.
We have also seen steady growth in corporate support rounds for Japan-based companies over the past four quarters.
A 45% increase in the number of business support rounds in India and a 17% increase in business investment in the US adds further weight to anecdotal evidence that the post-COVID-19 slump in US business investment may be over. It has increased.
The largest round from India in the third quarter was a $65 million Series D round in healthcare company Qure.ai. Funders for the company, which uses AI to detect diseases, include pharmaceutical company MSD and healthcare company Novo.
The largest U.S. corporate funding round in the third quarter was a $640 million Series D raised by machine learning chip maker Groq, which also included backing from Cisco, KDDI/Global Brain, and Samsung. Ta.
Corporate investment transactions in Israel and China declined in the third quarter. These developments are not surprising given the fact that conflicts are escalating in the Middle East, China is mired in a recession and real estate crisis, and central banks have recently stepped in to cut interest rates.
Overall, the number of corporate deals increased in the most recent quarter, with 953 rounds compared to 819 in Q3 2023. However, the value of these deals decreased year over year from an estimated $31.5 billion in 2023. In the third quarter of last year, it was $24.55 billion, down 22% this year.
Corporate-backed funding rounds generally follow the general trend for VC investing, but there was some divergence in this latest quarter, with a decline in the amount of money spent on purely VC-backed funding rounds. However, funding rounds involving corporate support have been more consistent. And it’s stable.
Corporate transactions for medical devices are increasing
Medical devices is a healthcare sector that saw a notable increase in corporate activity in the third quarter. In the three months to the end of September, a total of £1.8bn was invested in the sector in deals involving businesses.
The most significant deal in the space is a $277 million Series D round with Element Biosciences, which develops DNA sequencing and multi-omics (a biological analytical approach that combines multiple datasets such as the genome and epigenome). It was. This round was supported by Samsung.
Elsewhere, Israel’s Magenta Medical saw $105 million in funding from backers including Novo Holdings. The company is a developer of heart pumps for patients undergoing intervention.
There was also Jupiter Endovascular, a US company developing robotics for gastrointestinal diseases. The company has raised $97 million in Series D funding from backers including British distributor Neptune Medical and Japanese manufacturer Olympus.
Return to “normal” for big sales
Since the end of 2021, the proportion of relatively small funding rounds has increased. Large rounds of more than $100 million accounted for about 20% of deals at the height of the pandemic boom, but have now stabilized at about 10% of deals. Standard before the boom.
In particular, the number of large rounds exceeding $200 million has remained flat over the past three years.
But rounds are still happening, and in fact, the 10 largest rounds in Q3 2024 were all over $300 million.
The biggest deal of the quarter was Clio, a Canadian legaltech company that develops cloud solutions for the legal industry, raised $900 million in Series F. The round was backed by Capital G, one of Alphabet’s CVC arm.
In another mega-round, generative AI company Cohere raised $500 million from backers including Cisco, Fujitso, Salesforce, and Nvidia. German defense company Hellsing also received $493 million in Series C funding from backers including automaker Saab.
