
Life science venture capital funding saw a major boost in the 2nd quarter as public markets smiled on biotech companies, but medical device makers saw a significant boost of their own – as long as they weren’t early-stage firms.
Device makers collected $649 million during Q2 2014, a 23% bump over the same period last year, according to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers. The number of deals decreased to 73, down year-over-year from 77 deals reported in Q2 2013.
Late-stage deals saw most of the funding as the early-stage drought continued in medtech.
Early-stage funding amounted to $169 million in 24 deals, representing a 10% decrease year over year and a 22% decrease quarter-over-quarter. Average funding size for early-stage deals was $7.1 million.
Late-stage funding continued to grow, coming in at $479 million in 49 deals during the quarter. That’s a 41% increase year-over-year and a 25% boost quarter-over quarter. Average deal size for late-stage firms was $9.8 million, according to the report.
Biotech companies saw a much larger take during the quarter, raising a collective $1.84 billion in VC in 122 deals. Even excluding the a couple of mega-deals ($200 million for Intarcia Therapeutics and $119.5 million for Proteus Digital Health), biotech funding grew nearly 40% quarter-over-quarter.
In total life sciences companies garnered $2.5 billion in venture capital funding during Q2 2014, the highest single-quarter investment since Q2 2007 and the strongest 2nd-quarter since PwC launched its data series in 1995.
Nonetheless, the industry garnered a smaller share of the total VC pie, collecting 19% of total venture funding in Q2 2014 compared with 28% in Q2 2013. Overall VC funding came to $13 billion in 1,114 deals, according to the report.