After raising near-record amounts in 2018, San Diego startups continued to draw big investments into the new year. In the first quarter of 2019, San Diego companies raised $204 million over 20 deals, down from $358.4 million in the first quarter of 2018, according to a report released on April 9 by PricewaterhouseCoopers and CB Insights.
Nationwide, the amount of funding increased slightly compared to 2018. U.S. companies raised a total of $24.6 billion across 1,279 deals in the first quarter of 2019, compared to $22.8 billion across 1,524 deals at the beginning of 2018.
Though funding in 2019 fell from the explosive funding rounds of late 2018, the U.S. had a record number of unicorns, or private companies valued over $1 billion, with 147 reported in the first quarter. The new year also saw a handful notable companies going public, including Gossamer Bio’s $276 million IPO. The company was valued at $966 million when it went public, making it the third top-valued IPO in the country behind Lyft and Alector Biosciences.
These were the top 20 venture capital investments in the San Diego area, according to the PwC MoneyTree report:
- Ostendo Technologies – $45 million
- Wiliot – $30 million
- Erasca – $22 million
- Adigica Health – $18.71 million
- Home Bay – $13.5 million
- PetDesk – $12 million
- Zingle – $11 million
- LeadCrunch – $10.55 million
- Liquid Instruments – $8.16 million
- Cardea Bio – $7.8 million
- Exagen Diagnostics – $6.59 million
- Biolinq – $4.75 million
- alwaysAI – $4 million
- GenomeDx Biosciences – $3.2 million
- BioIntervene – $3.13 million
- MixMode – $1.83 million
- AltheaDx – $1.68 million
- MedCrypt – $150,000
- GoMeta – seed round, amount not disclosed
- JuneShine – seed round, amount not disclosed
