Venture capitalists raised a record amount of money in the second quarter of 2016, according to data from PitchBook. Worldwide, VCs brought in $18.7 billion across 101 funds, up 15% from what they secured in the same period last year. It’s the latest sign that funds continue to flow freely to investors, who also set a fundraising record in the first quarter of 2016, with $16.3 billion in capital.
The second quarter included several deals worth $1 billion or more. Andreessen Horowitz, a prominent VC firm in Silicon Valley, closed a $1.5 billion fund in June to invest “under the broad thesis of ‘software is eating the world,’ ” the firm said on its blog. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, another big-name Silicon Valley firm, closed a pair of funds at the end of the month that totaled $1.4 billion.
Meanwhile, financing to VC-backed startups picked up in the second quarter. Venture capitalists awarded close to $42 billion to companies over the last three months, according to PitchBook, a 31% jump from the $32 billion they handed out in the first quarter.
A handful of companies took in a disproportionate amount of the funding in the latest quarter. Uber alone was responsible for $5.6 billion of the global total, and its Chinese rival Didi Chuxing another $7.3 billion.
Even tech IPOs heated up in the second quarter, with seven tech/internet companies going public on US exchanges, according to data from Dealogic. That was after zero debuted in the first quarter—the worst for tech IPOs since the Great Recession.