The Paycheck Protection Program doled out cash to help businesses stay afloat amid the Covid-19 pandemic. We look at how many have since exited, raised rounds, and become unicorns.
At the height of the pandemic, the US government extended a lifeline in the form of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), doling out forgivable loans worth anywhere between $150K and $10M to businesses that applied and met the required criteria. As of July 30, the US Small Business Administration has distributed nearly $800B across 11.5M loans.
Among these, more than 9,600 companies (9,674 to be exact) were backed by venture capital, private equity, and other investors. To view and filter all the VC- and PE-backed companies that received PPP loans, click here.
We dug into the data to see how these companies fared after their PPP loans in terms of mortality, additional financing, and exits via M&A and IPO.
Only 30 out of 9,674 companies have died (gone out of business) since their PPP loan.
From a financing perspective:
- 17 companies that took PPP loans went on to raise financing at a unicorn valuation ($1B+).
- 1,762 companies (18% of the total) raised a round of financing after receiving their PPP loan. Of these, 550 raised their subsequent equity funding in Q2’20 — the peak of uncertainty during the pandemic.
- $47.7B is the total equity funding raised by these companies after receiving their PPP loan.
- 677 companies (7%) exited. Of these, 578 were M&A deals, and 99 were IPOs (57 of which were SPACs). The bulk of the M&A deals were done by strategics, with just 48 involving financial buyers.
