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As was presaged by a narrative-violating drop in February venture funding, Q1 2022 was the first quarter in which global VC funding contracted in well over a year, per Crunchbase data.
- Last quarter, VCs invested $160 billion, down 13% from Q4 2021, in which a record-breaking $184 billion was spent.
Important caveat: Funding cooled off on a quarter to quarter basis, but it’s still up 7% year over year from Q1 2021. Also, the last quarter’s total of $160 billion is equal to almost half of the $335 billion VCs invested in the *full year* of 2020. So, take the slowdown with a grain of megaround-sized salt.
Here are three of the biggest emerging tech funding rounds that stood out to us last month:
Yuga Labs: The company that brought really expensive monkey cartoons (read: Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs) into the world raised a $450 million *seed round* in March. The company was founded in, uh, 2021, and is already valued at $4 billion. Zoom out a bit: Bored Apes are among the most popular in the $17.6 billion NFT world.
Source Global: Usually a startup would not want to be described as “pulling things out of thin air,” but it’s different for Source, which builds “hydropanels” that extract potable water from vapor. The company raised $150 million last month to continue building out and selling its tech, which has been installed in 52 countries so far. Its panels cost ~$2,000 each and work by collecting water vapor and using sunlight to help liquify that vapor.
Volocopter: With a $170 million Series E, the German electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft (eVTOL) company officially became a unicorn in March. The company is hoping to be first to market with a commercial air-taxi service, aiming to begin service in 2024. It’s not the only eVTOL-maker with that goal.