Deal values continue to trend downwards: In Q4 2022, there were 130 deals totaling $3.53 billion, a 26% decrease from Q3’s 166 deals totaling $4.83 billion. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter of decline in ETI investment. Q4’s total deal value is down 69.5% from the all-time peak of $11.58 billion across 275 deals in Q1 2022. ETI deal value still accounted for 11.6% of all seed- and early-stage VC investment, which is higher than the historical average of around 10%.





Large deals returning to normal levels: We recorded 9 ETI deals sized $100 million or larger, still above the historical quarterly average of five in 2015 but down from the peaks of 19 and 21 in Q4 2021 and Q1 2022, respectively. The largest deal consisted of a $250 million Series B round for ClickHouse, an open source OLAP data management system. The next-largest deals included enterprise SaaS startup Island raising a $175.0 million Series B, and the biotech startup Odyssey Therapeutics closing a $168.0 million Series B. Additionally, decentralized exchange platform Uniswap raised a $165.0 million Series B, and another biotech startup, Apogee Therapeutics, closed a $149.0 million Series B.







Biotech and AI & ML lead ETI investment, while the Web3 & DeFi sector remains popular: In Q4, biotech and AI & ML attracted the most ETI investment with $455.7 million and $401.9 million invested, respectively. Data tech and health & wellness tech also saw notable investment at $376.4 million and $292.0 million, respectively, while fintech had 10 deals but a lower amount of total investment at $172.4 million. Over the last 12 months, biotech received the highest amount of capital investment at $6.1 billion across 38 deals, followed by Web3 & DeFi with 103 deals and $4.6 billion invested. Despite the change in the top areas of investment this quarter, biotech, Web3, and fintech remain popular destinations of ETI capital.



AI & ML, consumer, and e-commerce deal counts increase from Q3: While most categories continued to decline relative to Q3, certain verticals bounced back up. The consumer segment jumped from two deals in Q3 to six in Q4, e-commerce leapt from five in Q3 to nine in Q4, and AI & ML jumped from eight in Q3 to 12 in Q4. This suggests that while the broader ETI environment continues to respond negatively to economic headwinds, some verticals continue to show resilience.