As per the National Venture Capital Association, Venture capitalists spent $17.5 billion on the investments last quarter. This way, the Venture Capital investment have rose to their highest level in almost 15 years as the last it made the same was in the final quarter of the year 2000. In the fourth quarter of 2000, Venture Capital investments summed to $21.97 billion, claimed a recent report.
Such large funding rounds were led by $1.5 billion for the accommodation service Airbnb, the online markerplace and $537.6 million for Snapchat, the photo service. Eventually, the fund towards Snapchat has led the way on the software part. The second largest was the HR software developer Zenefits Insurance Services that managed to get funds of $500 million. Zenefits has confirmed this funding amount and it has revealed its plans of making use of the same towards the launch of new products and services.
On the whole, the software sector drew $7.3 billion of the total investments and this is an increase in this segment than any other quarter since the year 1995. The software industry has raked in more VC funding in the second quarter of this year than the other segments. As the Airbnb deal accounted towards its total, the entertainment and media sector is the second largest with a total sum of $2.7 billion.
A potential reason for the largesse of venture capitalists is fat wallets. At the beginning of this month, the NVCA claimed that venture firms managed to raise $10.31 billion in the last quarter that is over a quarter higher than $8.13 billion in the previous year.
In almost all the sectors, the venture capital firms are holding onto the investments instead of sending them to the public markets. Among the 27 initial public offerings in the previous quarter, almost 19 were in the field of biotechnology, stated NVCA earlier this month.