Is venture financing back yet? • TechCrunch

despite continuing to talk On a possible recession, falling tech stocks and a slowdown in the world of start-up investing, the funding business was buzzing positively last week. After slowing down a lot last spring, venture teams revealed a staggering $8 billion in new capital commitments in the span of just five days.

Consider the following: NEA revealed that it closed its two newest funds totaling $6.2 billion; Cowboy Ventures announced two funds totaling $260 million; and FJ Labs also disclosed two funds totaling $260 million. Then there’s Sapphire Sport (closed a second fund for $181 million), Volition Capital (announced $675 million for its fifth fund), Kearny Jackson ($14 million) and Dimension ($350 million). Even non-US companies got in on the action, including Highland Europe, which announced a new €1 billion fund, and a Japanese chemical giant that revealed a $100 million fund.

So what exactly is going on? Are we over this recession yet? While it’s impossible to tell, the flurry of activity is likely due to a few unsurprising things.

For starters, many “new” funds closed last year but weren’t announced for one reason or another. Defy.vc, for example, an early-stage venture outfit based in Woodside, California, said it is now investing out of a $300 million third fund (compared to a $151 million debut fund and a $151 million start-up fund). second year of $262 million that closed in 2019).

Defy actually closed the fund in the middle of last year, but hasn’t said anything until now because it was actively investing in its previous fund until a few months ago, co-founder Neil Sequeira said. At the time, he said, the timing didn’t seem right.

“It was an interesting time on the Nasdaq and [regarding] global geopolitical issues,” he said, referring to the confluence of events that made 2022 a year many would soon forget, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and disruption of supply chains to rising inflation around the world.