Failed Startups Raised $27 Billion in Funding This Year: Report

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Startups are having a pretty grim year.

Simply over $27 billion in enterprise funding was raised by the three,200 startups that failed in 2023, The New York Times reported, citing figures from startup tracker PitchBook.

That is near the quantity raised by startups from enterprise capital within the third quarter of 2023 ($29.8 billion), based on accounting agency EY.

Nonetheless, the $27.2 billion determine seemingly underrepresents the true scale of the money burn, as many firms may have failed with none fanfare. And notably, the tally does not embody main losses from public firms or those who have been acquired.

As an illustration, coworking firm WeWork raised greater than $11 billion earlier than its IPO, and filed for bankruptcy in November. And faculty monetary help startup Frank was acquired by JPMorgan in 2021 for $175 million, earlier than being shuttered in January over fraudulent customer figures.

This 12 months’s seen a string of high-profile startup failures. Pizza startup Zume, which raised almost $500 million, shut down in June after struggling to make its pizza automation know-how work.

Convoy, the freight startup that was as soon as hailed because the “Uber for trucking” and raised greater than $1 billion, shut down in November.

This 12 months’s startup troubles led Tom Loverro, a common accomplice at funding agency IVP, to name it a “mass extinction event” for startups.

These troubles stem partly from the decline in funding. There’s been a drought in VC funding in contrast with 2022, with $104.5 billion raised within the first 9 months of the 12 months versus $183.9 billion in the identical interval final 12 months, per EY.