Global Funding Report: Q2 brings us positive growth

2018 continues to show positive growth in startup funding.

It’s yet again time to look back on the second quarter of this year to see how startup funding has been changing. In our Global Funding 2018 Q2 report, we analyzed the startup funding, rounds, round-sizes, industries, regions and more. Here is a short overview of the most important findings.

Startup funding keeps growing

The total funding in the second quarter of 2018 grew by a whopping 66% compared to the same time the year before. The same trend was seen in Q1 2018, so startup funding has been increasing globally for the whole year so far. In the first quarter of this year, the funding was $32,5 bn.

22% of the global funding was raised by Ant Financial, which ended up at $14bn.

Asia is taking the lead

Although all regions saw a growth in funding compared to Q2 2017, Asia more than doubled the funding. The startup funding in Asia reached $28bn in Q2, $14bn of which was raised by China’s leading financial services provider Ant Financial.

Asia‘s funding more than doubled and reached a total of $28,9bn in Q2 2018.

Rest of the world stands out with a huge increase in funding reaching $5.4bn. The main reason for the huge increase was Block.one’s ICO of $4bn. Headquartered on the Cayman Islands, Block.one describes itself as the most powerful infrastructure for decentralized applications.

More ICO funding with fewer rounds

ICOs started to gain traction at the beginning of 2017 and had a slight dip at the end of the year. Despite the cool off, ICO funding grew massively in 2018 reaching $5bn in Q2, $4bn of which was raised by the aforementioned Block.one.

The ICO funding in Q2 2018 reached $5bn.

ICO round-sizes have been increasing since the beginning of the ICO-craze, due to the overall increase in ICO funding and a decrease in the number of rounds. The average round-size in Q2 2018 was $317m. This is the highest average out of all other rounds like seed, early stages, series B etc.

Find out more about the big picture of Q2 funding in 2018, quarterly development, industry trends, funding stages and top deals in our full report.

The full report is completely free and available for download: www.funderbeam.com/reports