Tech Finance tracked a total of 98 funding deals in April, compared to 88 deals in March, 80 in February, and 100 in January. The total amount raised by tech outfits in April rose to a healthy $1.49bn, compared to the $1.44bn raised in March, $844m in February, and $907m in January.
When the funding is broken down into sectors, software-related companies gained the most funding rounds, with 19 deals in total that raised a total of $239.5m. It should be noted that the amount raised in this sector was skewered by a $105m debt funding raised by financing and consulting services provider Tideline Capital Inc. This took the average deal size to $12.6m.
The security industry came a close second to the software sector with 18 deals in April that raised a total of $135.2m. The average deal size here was $7.5m. The stand-out deal in this sector was the $30m Series E funding received by Infoblox Inc. This start-up is raking in cash as it attempts to make a case for a range of specialized devices for security and email directory management, and the latest round brings its total funding to $65m.
The networking sector was in third place, with 16 deals raising a total of $176.2m, giving an average deal size of $11m. The stand-out deal here was Canada’s Simpler Networks Corp, which raised $25m Series B to accelerate its marketing activities and to strengthen its sales efforts in the US and Europe.
The semiconductor sector was in fourth place with 13 deals that raised a total of $124m, giving an average deal size of $9.5m. The stand-out deal in April in this sector was T-RAM Semiconductor Inc, which gained $40m Series C round, bringing the total funding raised by the five-year-old company to $86m. T-RAM Semiconductor has developed a small but extremely fast memory cell expected to surpass today’s high-density high-performance, 6T-SRAM (Six Transistor-Static Random Access Memory) devices.
The multimedia sector was the fifth most active sector, with nine deals that raised a modest $47m.
Internet-related companies saw nine funding deals that raised $122m. The stand-out deal here was online digital music provider Loudeye Corp, which raised $55m through a share sale.
The wireless sector was next with eight deals that raised a modest $42.3m.
In the hardware sector, four companies raised a total of $68.8m. The stand-out deal was the $45m raised by utility computing developer Egenera Inc in a combined Series E and credit round.
In the services sector there was only one deal: Getronics NV raised $518m in a rights offering. The telecoms sector also saw one deal: Telarix Inc raised $6.5m Series B.
Once again, the vast majority of the funding deals occurred in the US, with 77 funding deals in April for US-based companies. There were five deals in the UK, five in Israel, three in France, three in Canada, and single deals in Germany, Poland, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
According to latest research by London-based corporate finance advisory company Go4Venture, the European venture capital market is back on track, after recording a 35% year-on-year rise in March in its European VC Investment Activity Index. However, judging by the above country-by-country breakdown, Europe still has a long way to go before it can hope to rival the US.
