San Diego VC Funding at $426.5M in Third Quarter; Plus Top 10 Deals

Solana Beach, CA

The San Diego artificial intelligence company Brain Corp. topped the chart for raising the most venture capital in San Diego during the third quarter that ended September 30, according to Venture Monitor data released Tuesday.

As Xconomy reported in July, Brain Corp. raised $114 million in a Series C funding round led by Softbank’s new $100 billion Vision Fund. In a statement at the time, Brain Corp said it has developed AI technology “to enable robots to perceive their environment, learn to control their motion, and navigate using visual cues and landmarks while avoiding people and obstacles.”

Altogether, venture firms invested a total of $426.5 million in 39 San Diego area companies during the third quarter, according to data from the Venture Monitor report from Seattle-based PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. That was a 6 percent uptick from the $401.3 million (a corrected figure from July) that venture firms invested in San Diego startups during the second quarter—and 30 percent higher than the $327 million that VCs sank into San Diego startups in the year-ago quarter.

(Nationwide results from the Venture Monitor report are here.)

It was the third consecutive quarter in which venture firms pumped at least $400 million into the San Diego area. If venture activity continues at the same pace, total funding for the year would end on a par with the $1.8 billion invested in San Diego in 2016. That was the recent high-water mark, according to Venture Monitor data.

While third-quarter funding increased, the deal count in the San Diego area declined by more than a third from the previous quarter, when the Venture Monitor counted 61 deals. The deal count was down from the same quarter in 2016, when there were 58 deals.

A separate MoneyTree survey released today by PricewaterhouseCoopers and CB Insights also shows that venture funding increased in San Diego during the quarter, although that report pegs the total at $361.7 million in 24 deals. Venture funding in the quarter was about 25 percent higher than the $289.1 million that VCs invested in the prior quarter and 18 percent higher than the $304 million invested in the third quarter of 2016.

The Venture Monitor and MoneyTree Report use different methodologies to count venture deals. The MoneyTree Report also showed a few differences in San Diego’s top 10 deals, including $25 million for PatientSafe Solutions, $11.5 million for SkySafe, and $11.5 million for HouseCall.

Based on the Venture Monitor data, our list of San Diego’s Top 10 venture deals during the third quarter is here:

Brain Corp. $114 million Artificial Intelligence / Robotics San Diego
Amplyx $67 million Life Sciences / Oncology San Diego
Effector Therapeutics $38.6 million Life Sciences / Oncology San Diego
Sotera Wireless $31.8 million Healthtech San Diego
Hookit $16 million Social Media / Software as Service Solana Beach
Aspyrian Therapeutics $15.1 million Life Sciences / Oncology San Diego
Colorscience $15 million Skin Care / Cosmetics Carlsbad, CA
Citadel Defense $13.75 million IT / Drone Defense National City, CA
Ocean Aero $12.9 million Aerospace Robotics San Diego
Tsunami VR $11.9 million IT / Virtual Reality Del Mar, CA

 

 

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.