Explained in 5 charts: Venture capital in 2023

barely two weeks In the year, 2024 the startup news machine is running at full clip. A quick scan of TechCrunch headlines shows that venture funds are adding new capital, and startups that have either raised a lot of money or are in the process of closing deals to raise a lot of money.

We looked at how venture capital investing performed around the world over the past few days, but today we wanted to take a more comprehensive look at the numbers.

The TechCrunch+ team has charted data from PitchBook on venture capital investment flows around the world and into the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The following data visualization includes data from the full eight quarters, showing the decline from enterprise excesses in 2021 through the end of 2023.

We’ll start with the global picture and then look at how each region performed.

global venture capital results

At first glance this chart doesn’t seem very dramatic. It is clear that since Q1 2022 there has been a consistent decline in investments as well as a corresponding decline in total deal volumes. But when we first looked at the latest data we sensed a slowdown, as venture investment ($345.7 billion) in 2023 had fallen to levels we last saw in 2018 and 2019 – before the pandemic arrived.

However, Q4 2023 was particularly bad: Q4 2017 was the last time we saw venture investment this low in the last three months of the year. This is not good, especially if venture investment continues to decline in every quarter through 2023. Will 2024 not be the year of comeback that many are hoping for?