July turned out to be a hot month for both U.S. temperatures and venture dealmaking. But while we can reliably count on temperatures in much of the Northern Hemisphere to rise this time of year, the same doesn’t always hold true of startup investment.
As it turned out, however, the usual most-active dealmakers largely held up the pace. Some even accelerated their investment activity, backing multiple, and often large, rounds for companies in AI, fintech and other sectors.
Among lead investors, Insight Partners ranked as the most-active dealmaker for the month, while Y Combinator was the busiest dealmaker when we added nonlead rounds. Andreessen Horowitz, meanwhile, came in second for both these rankings.
Below, we look at how a broader subset of firms ranked across multiple categories.
Most-active venture investors
The most-active venture investors by round count in July were Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz. By this metric, which looked at rounds of $5 million or more, Y Combinator backed 18 rounds, while Andreessen invested in 12.
After that, there were multiple investors that each participated in seven deals: Thrive Capital, Pioneer Fund, Insight Partners, BoxGroup and Bessemer Venture Partners. For a bigger-picture view of who was busy closing deals in July, we ranked the 13 top investors below.
Most-active and highest-spending lead investors
The most-active U.S. lead investor for July was Insight Partners, with seven rounds. Among its larger deals, the New York-based firm led a $150 million Series C for Anaconda, a provider of AI tools for businesses using open source applications, and a $40 million Series B for Trunk Tools, a developer of construction automation software.
Andreessen Horowitz was the second-most-active lead investor, with four deals, followed by Thrive Capital and Kleiner Perkins, with three deals each.
Of course, the investor that leads the highest number of deals isn’t always the one that spends the most. In terms of highest-spending lead investors 1 the two top names for July were SurgoCap Partners and T. Rowe Price, which co-led an $820 million financing for alternative investment platform iCapital Network at a valuation of over $7.5 billion. (The largest startup funding deal last month was the SpaceX-led round for CEO Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI.)
Iconiq Capital, was the next-heaviest spender, amid what has been an extraordinarily action-packed streak for the cross-stage investor. Its largest lead round was a $500 million Series E for fintech unicorn Ramp.
Below, we look at the 11 heaviest spenders by value of rounds they led or co-led.
Seed investors
At seed stage, perennial frontrunner Y Combinator was once again the most-active investor, with 24 reported deals. The second-most-active, with nine deals, was Pioneer Fund, an investment vehicle backed by Y Combinator alums that funds the accelerator’s most promising startups.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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