Venture-Capital Funding Gets Bigger in Texas
Amid high expectations, Texas startups draw robust investments in first months of 2021
Texas is so far this year living up to its reputation as a burgeoning venture-capital and startup hub. Helped by the roster of new funds and entrepreneurs that have flocked to the state during the pandemic and in recent years, Texas has kicked off 2021 with strong investment figures.
Venture firms committed roughly $1.3 billion into Texas-based startups through March 11, eclipsing the amount raised in each of the previous three full quarters, according to data prepared by analytics firm PitchBook Data Inc. The capital raised so far is slightly less than the record $1.5 billion raised in the first quarter of 2020.
The rise in investment is an early indicator that the state’s burgeoning status as a premier destination for investors and entrepreneurs is coming to fruition. While Texas’s technology sector was growing before the pandemic, a string of moves by high-profile investors and entrepreneurs to Austin in the past year pinned even higher expectations on the state.
The region’s rising fortune will continue to chip away at Silicon Valley’s tech dominance, analysts say. PitchBook, for instance, predicted in a report this year that the San Francisco Bay Area’s proportion of venture deal count in 2021 will fall below 20% in the U.S. for the first time since it began tracking such figures.
As more firms focus on the state, investment value in Texas is rising!