San Diego VC Funding Hits $547.2M in Q1; Ideaya Leads Top 10 Deals

San Diego Map 1480x (Depositphotos © lucianmilasan)

Venture capital investors sank $547.2 million into 37 startup companies throughout San Diego County during the first three months of 2018, maintaining roughly the same level of venture funding seen in recent quarters, according to the Venture Monitor Report.

The amount of capital invested in the San Diego area was up slightly from the $541.2 million invested during the final three months of 2017, according to Venture Monitor data. It was almost 4 percent higher than the $526.7 million invested in the first quarter last year. Venture Monitor data on first-quarter venture capital activity was released Tuesday by Seattle-based PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

Details on VC funding nationwide are available here.

The San Diego deal count, however, was down substantially from the previous quarter (66 deals) as well as the 51 deals that PitchBook counted in the first quarter of 2017.

Data from a rival survey released Wednesday—the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and CB Insights—found that venture firms invested $346.2 million in 15 deals in the San Diego area.

Each survey uses its own sources and methodologies to track VC activity, so the numbers don’t often match. For example, PitchBook’s list of top 10 deals in San Diego shows $94 million in funding for Ideaya Biosciences, but the MoneyTree Report for the same quarter doesn’t include that deal.

Both deal lists, though, showed that the overwhelming majority of venture funding invested in San Diego went to life sciences companies in the first quarter. According to PitchBook data, biotechs and other healthcare companies accounted for seven of the top 10 deals in the region, and more than $360 million—or almost two-thirds—of the total PitchBook counted. According to MoneyTree data, life sciences accounted for seven deals and $319 million—or more than 92 percent—of the total that MoneyTree counted in San Diego.

Here is the list of top 10 deals in San Diego, based on PitchBook data:

Ideaya Biosciences $94 million Biotech
Gossamer Bio $80 million Healthcare Devices
Crinetics Pharamaceuticals $63.5 million Biotech
Singlera Genomics $60 million Biotech
Expansion Therapeutics $55.3 million Biotech
Vertiflex $45.3 million Healthcare Devices
Pairwise Plant $25 million Agricultural Biotech
Reneo Pharmaceuticals $22 million Drug Delivery
VitaCup $11.1 million Consumer Beverages
Boomcloud360 $10.8 million Consumer Audio

 

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.