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Global venture funding reached $21 billion in October 2023, a few billion dollars  below the average 2023 monthly funding amount to date, Crunchbase data shows.

Funding continued to slow year over year with October amounts down around 24% from the $28 billion invested in October 2022.

To put this in a wider context, funding last month was less than one-third the monthly totals during the peak months of 2021.

Seed and early-stage funding also declined by about a third year over year as investors continued to scale back. Late-stage funding declined by 18% from a year ago, Crunchbase data shows.

Venture funding to U.S. companies totaled $11 billion — slightly more than 50% of total global funding.

Closures and M&A

Two high-profile unicorn companies shuttered in October: trucking company Convoy and health care claims management company Olive AI. Each company was valued at close to $4 billion and had raised almost $1 billion in funding.

Well-funded late-stage companies will not be the only casualties in this slower funding environment as more companies that raised at record rates in 2021 and in the first half of 2022 face a funding cliff.

Meanwhile, M&A activity picked up in October.

Notable acquisitions included video chat company Loom, acquired by Atlassian for $975 million, and data pipeline company Arcion, acquired by cloud data company Databricks for $100 million. In edtech, Instructure acquired academic credentialing platform Parchment for $795 million.

AI, health care lead

Crunchbase data also shows artificial intelligence companies are garnering a greater share of dollars invested.

AI and health care companies raised the largest amounts last month, with close to $5 billion invested in each of those sectors. Google doubled down on investing in Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor with an initial $500 million investment and a commitment of up to $2 billion from the search giant.

Methodology

Funding rounds included in this report are seed, angel, venture, corporate-venture and private-equity rounds in venture-backed companies. This reflects data in Crunchbase as of Nov. 3, 2023.

Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Glossary of funding terms

As of January 2023, we have made a change to how we include corporate funding rounds in our reporting. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.

Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.

Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.

Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million.

Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

Illustration: Dom Guzman