North Carolina-based high-growth companies raised a record-setting $2.7 billion in venture funding in 2018, a 144 percent increase over 2017, according to the Durham-based Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED).
The CED recently released its 2018 Innovators Report, which tracks the activity of technology-based entrepreneurial enterprises in North Carolina.
“Having large, noteworthy fundraisings such as those completed by Epic Games, Precision Biosciences, and Humacyte certainly spotlights the region as a great place to start and grow a high-tech business,” said Ravila Gupta, chief executive officer of the CED. “Entrepreneurs continue to be a great source of economic growth for our state, and these large investments in local companies help fuel that momentum.”
All told, 176 companies completed 207 deals totaling $2,748,989,918 across the tech, life science, cleantech, makers, and advanced manufacturing and materials industries.
Some interesting highlights of the report include:
- The $1.25 billion deal involving video game company Epic Games, based in Cary, was the single-largest venture fundraising in the U.S. in 2018, as well as the single biggest raise of its type in North Carolina history.
- In 2018, the mean deal size was a $13.4 million transaction as opposed to $5 million in 2017.
- Funding in the life science sector increased by 171 percent, to over $730 million.
- In 2018, North Carolina entrepreneurs raised capital from a wide variety of investors from throughout the country and internationally. Seventy-five percent of the institutional investors were headquarterd outside the Southeast U.S.