Uber and Snapchat were the big winners as investment by venture capital firms rose in the second quarter of 2016, accounting for nearly a third of total investment.
In total, from April to June, venture capitalists invested $15.3 billion in 961 deals, according to the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).
Uber raised $3.5 billion while Snapchat raised $1.8 billion, accounting for nearly a third of total investments.
The figure compared to $12.7 billion invested in 1,011 deals in the previous quarter, but the total amount of investment fell 12 percent year-on-year.
In line with the previous two quarters, software considered to receive the highest level of funding across all industries, receiving a total of $8.7 billion across 379 deals.
Uber’s investment came from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund at the beginning of June, which poured $3.5 billion into the company and drove its valuation up to $62.5 billion.
There are some signs that Uber may now look to debt rather than equity as a means of funding. In early July, it was reported that Uber had raised $1.15bn in the form of a leveraged loan in order to expand its operations globally. It will pay a yield of nearly 5 percent on the loan, which was arranged by Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs Group.
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The loan takes the total amount raised by Uber when both debt and equity are included to more than $15bn.
Snapchat raised 1.8bn in a new round of funding in May, with new investors including Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic and T Rowe Price, as well as participation from existing investors in the round. Existing investors in Snapchat included Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark, Alibaba, Yahoo, and fund manager Fidelity.
Q1 saw a slowdown due to turbulence in global stock markets.
