U.S. Venture Capital Has Its Biggest Quarter Since Dot-Com Days

U.S. venture capitalists put $8.1 billion into 812 deals in the second quarter of 2012, their single largest quarter in more than a decade, according to CB Insights.

It’s clear factors like the greater American economy and the bumpy tech IPO market don’t necessarily have a direct and/or timely correlation with venture capital spending.

Funding was up 37 percent from the first quarter, and five percent from a year ago. Number of deals were up three percent from the past quarter and four percent from the past year.

The growth wasn’t driven by the outsized impact of a few large deals. In the largest sector, Internet, median deal sized increased at every stage of funding for the first time ever, CB Insights said.

Venture capitalists were particularly aggressive on early stage investments in the second quarter. Seed stage venture capital accounted for 22 percent of all deals, continuing steady acceleration since the beginning of last year.

There were more seed deals than Series A fundings for the first time ever. And that’s excluding angel funding, which CB Insights counts separately.

What categories did particularly well? Ed tech, e-commerce and enterprise.

Social investments in the Internet sector are down, though mobile social is booming after the Facebook-Instagram deal. Photo and video start-ups accounted for 29 percent of mobile funding dollars.

Green tech turned in a good quarter based on big money for Fisker Automotive and Bloom Energy.

CB Insights also did considerable work to break out venture capital trends by region, which you can see in the full report when it’s posted here.

Via: All Things D