Tech sector saw boost in venture investing activity in Q1
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Indiana’s tech sector posted strong venture funding activity in the first quarter, landing a combined $348.8 million through 29 deals, a new TechPoint report says.
According to TechPoint’s first-quarter Indiana Tech Venture Report, released Thursday, last quarter’s deal value was by far the strongest first-quarter funding activity since the organization began tracking such data in 2015.
In comparison, the previous high-water mark was in the first quarter of 2021, when venture investment totaled just shy of $150 million. In all other years since 2015, first-quarter venture funding was below $100 million.
Looking across all sectors, including tech, Indiana firms raised a total of $491.9 million in the first quarter—up sharply from $126.5 million during the same period in 2023.
Last quarter’s funding numbers, however, were propped up by two especially large deals.
Fort Wayne-based Mammoth Technology raised $270 million, the TechPoint report says. Another large first-quarter deal came from Carmel-based Sudo Biosciences, which landed $147 million in venture funding. (Because Sudo is a biosciences company, its deal is included in the cross-sector funding total of $491.9 million, but it is not included in the tech-specific funding total of $348.8 million.)
“The numbers that are going up are going up because of these huge deals that are outliers,” said Chelsea Linder, TechPoint’s vice president of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Linder said large deals like the Mammoth Technology and Sudo investments are a positive sign because they show that out-of-state investors are taking note of Indiana companies.
And out-of-state investors are important to Indiana’s tech ecosystem, Linder said. The state has lots of in-state funders who invest in seed rounds for early-stage startups, she said, but not as many investors that fund later-stage companies.
“And so a lot of the startups in Indiana will get to a certain point, and then they’re basically stuck and they can’t raise additional capital from investors within the state,” Linder said.
This, Linder said, is where the out-of-state investors fit in. “The dream would be that we could fund that all here so that we can keep the dollars in the state when the exit happens [when the company is acquired or goes public]. We’re all working towards that. But in the meantime, we need to have this out-of-state money coming in, to help these companies get to the next stage.”
The full TechPoint report, which includes funding breakdowns by tech sector and by geographic region, can be found here.