Despite the rise of both micro VCs and multi-stage firms at the seed-stage, seed deal activity in the US tech sector fell back in 2015.
The drop came as once prolific seed investors including Google Ventures dialed back its seed investing program last year. More precisely, 2015 saw US tech seed deals drop 5% from 2014’s multi-year high to hit just under 2,100 for the 12-month period. US tech seed funding increased barely (2%) in 2015 on a year-over-year basis to hit $1.8B.
Q4’15 saw the lowest deal activity since at least Q4’11.
Note: Data does not include angel and/or pre-seed tech financings.
The largest seed deals of 2015
Peeling back the largest US tech seed deals of last year, we see Sequoia Capital’s $13M investment into online peer-to-peer property and casualty insurance carrier Lemonade top the list. Lemonade is part of a growing cohort of early-stage startups in the insurance tech space. Biometric sensor startup Sano Intelligence and Greylock-backed stealth machine intelligence startup ASAPP rounded out the top 3.
| Company | Description | Amount | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lemonade | Online P2P insurer | 13 | Q4’15 |
| Sano Intelligence | Biometric sensor and software | 10.25 | Q2’15 |
| ASAPP | Stealth machine intelligence company | 7.57 | Q4’15 |
| Mast Mobile | All-in-one mobile communication platform | 7 | Q4’15 |
| NodePrime | Hyperscale datacenter management | 7 | Q3’15 |
| Car Lister | Social home for the auto industry | 6.5 | Q2’15 |
| Rescale | Software platform for science and engineering simulations | 6.4 | Q3’15 |
| Stringify | IoT platform | 6.3 | Q2’15 |
| Pixvana | VR/AR video viewing technology | 6 | Q4’15 |
| Atomwise | Drug discovery platform | 6 | Q2’15 |
| PeerIQ | P2P lending data provider | 6 | Q2’15 |
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