Healthcare tops all industries in 2018 first-quarter venture capital with $6.8 billion
Biopharmaceuticals garnered about half of the funding so far this year.
Healthcare companies in the U.S. raised a combined $6.85 billion in venture capital in the first quarter of 2018, representing 26.6 percent of all investment dollars, the largest of any industry.
A report from Dow Jones VentureSource shows that this considerable haul is 21 percent more than the industry raised in 2017's fourth quarter, though it's just a 4 percent increase from the same period last year.
In terms of funds, business and financial services came in second at 23 percent of capital raised, with information technology a close third at 21 percent.
The region that put healthcare over the top this past quarter was the Pacific Northwest, which was home to a number of significant funding rounds. Health technology company Accolade secured $50 million last month, and DNA sequencing outfit Stratos Genomics netted $20 million. According to GeekWire, there were also a number of acquisitions there, including a $9 billion acquisition of Juno Therapeutics By Celgene.
Nearly half of the funding in healthcare was from biopharmaceutical companies, likely driven by innovations such as cell therapies and gene editing.
Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com
