New data shows how far VCs are pulling back on US Series A, B, and C valuations

New data shows that the venture capital market is slowing down.

The round sizes from the Series A to C stages of the United States are in decline, while valuations attached to those deals are also falling, according to data collected by Carta. The pricing reprieve may be good for investors. The news may prove less desirable for the founders.

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We will get a lot of data about the domestic and global venture capital market at the start of the year because we are just weeks away from the end of the first quarter. We care more about near-term changes this morning than we do about aggregated data.

This is for investors putting capital to work now, and startup founders looking to close a new round in short order.

We're only talking about the U.S. market today, where Carta has the most data. We will continue to look for this sort of data from the company and its peers as the year progresses. Now into the data.

How Series A, B, and C rounds are changing in the United States

Capital raised per round is what we want to start with.

The data is very simple to understand. Peter Walker is the Head of Insights.

The image is called Carta.

We are contrasting the last two months of 2021 with the first two months of 2022, not full quarters. The above data is based on closing dates, not announcement dates, so we aren't mixing rounds from different periods that would pollute the dataset.

Series A rounds had the largest average decline in round size in the United States from November to December. Series A rounds are becoming less frequent according to this outlier. The decline in the median Series A round likely stems from the same reasons as the decline in the average round. Series A rounds on both a median and average basis are over the $10 million mark. The market is still hot.

Series B round data is similar to the median round-size shift. The Series B market is changing, but not as much as most companies raise. Series C data is more extreme, with round sizes falling more sharply in median terms than average, implying that outlier rounds at the venture stage are changing, but that we are seeing more movement among smaller deals than with Series A and B rounds.

The data is similar but there is one caveat. From the same source.