Wisconsin companies drew about $141 million in venture capital investments across 24 deals in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Seattle-based PitchBook, a firm that tracks data on venture and private equity deals.
Wisconsin companies raised a total of $273 million through 77 deals in 2020 – up from $214 million raised across 73 deals in 2019 and down from $443 million raised across 84 deals in 2018.
The average deal size in Wisconsin increased from $2.93 million in 2019 to $3.55 million in 2020
Wisconsin’s deal flow and secured investments last year still lag behind states in the region: Michigan raised $558 million across 139 deals, Ohio raised $1.5 billion across 165 deals, Illinois raised $2.8 billion across 294 deals, Indiana raised $318 million across 117 deals and Minnesota $1.8 billion across 124 deals, according to PitchBook.
Last year set new nation-wide records in venture capital in terms of deal value, exit value and capital raised for venture capital funds. Investors deployed $156.2 billion into startups, liquidated $290.1 billion of value via exists and closed on $73.6 billion in traditional venture capital funds, according to PitchBook’s 2020 annual report.
“On the heels of several years of high fundraising levels, the venture industry will start 2021 with $152 billion in dry powder. While uncertainty remains in the new year, the vast sum puts the industry in a strong position to deploy healthy levels of capital into promising startups,” the report states.
