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Houston companies received $173.7 million in venture capital (VC) investment in Q1/20, up 57.7 percent from Q1/19, according to a Partnership analysis of PitchBook data. The bulk of the investment came in a $125 million late-stage round to the financial software firm HighRadius, a deal which boosted the company’s valuation to over $1 billion. This was also the largest VC deal for a Houston tech company in the past 20 years, according to PitchBook data. The latest numbers don’t yet reflect the impact caused by the COVID-19 shutdown, though Q2 fundings could take a significant hit.  For the 12 months ending March ’20, VC investments in Houston totaled $662.6 million, a 68.3 percent increase from the same period last year. 

While overall investment volume was up, deal counts were down from Q1/19.  Startups closed 19 VC deals in Q1/20, down from 26 deals during the same quarter last year. 

Broken out by industry sector: 

•    Health Care, 10 deals worth $35.2 million, 
•    Information technology,  three deals worth $133.0 million, 
•    Business Products and Services (B2B),  three deals worth $3.6 million, 
•    Consumer Products and Services (B2C), three deals worth $1.2 million, 
•    Energy, one deal worth $0.6 million. 

Among the notable life science deals, ImmunoMet, a therapeutics company, received $13.6 million in late stage funding; the medical device firm Noninvasix, a product of the TMCx accelerator, received $3.6 million; and the digital health platform Vivante Health received $8.5 million in early stage funding. 

Prepared by Greater Houston Partnership Research

Josh Pherigo
Director, Data Analytics
713-844-3617
jpherigo@houston.org