According to PitchBook’s Q1 2024 report, the crypto industry saw a significant increase in fundraising in Q1 2024, with venture capital investments reaching $2.4 billion.
This surge marks a notable 40.3% increase from the $1.9 billion reported in Q4 2023, accompanied by a 44.7% growth in deal volume.
After a long decline from the peak of $11.1 billion in Q1 2022, the current rebound highlights the market’s resilience and growth potential. Notably, the leading funded projects came from diverse sectors.
Infrastructure startups led the way in funding during the quarter, with the largest rounds raised by:
- Ethereum re-staking platform EigenLayer ($100.0 million Series B), and
- Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) development platform Zama ($73.0 million Series A)
The largest deal of the quarter went to Together AI, developer of an open-source, decentralized cloud platform for large foundation models. The startup raised a $106 million early-stage round led by SalesForce Ventures at a $1.1 billion pre-money valuation. This comes on the heels of its $102.5 million Series A at a pre-money valuation of $463.5 million just last quarter [Q4 2023].
Compared with full-year 2023, valuations were up across all stages in Q1 2024.
“The median pre-money valuation for the pre-seed/seed stage was $21.8 million; the early stage, $72.0 million; and the late stage, $51.1 million, representing YoY increases of 85.5%, 148.3%, and 7.6%, respectively.”
“These numbers indicate that investment rounds have become highly competitive, especially at the early stages. This is compounded by the fact that early-stage deals are earning higher valuations than late-stage deals, but the sample set is relatively small, so we will see if this trend holds in the coming quarters.”
Deal sizes also reflected the valuation bumps, with median figures registering at:
- $2.7 million for the pre-seed/seed stage – an increase of 24.9% from full-year 2023
- $5 million for the early stage – an increase of 25% from full-year 2023
- $5.8 million for the late stage – a decrease of 9.7% from full-year 2023
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