The State Of Startup Funding On Each Of The 7 Continents

The startup world is flush with cash right now. In fact, there’s so much private funding floating around that companies are avoiding going public in favor of chasing fruitful private markets. Companies like Uber are pursuing that strategy (CEO woes notwithstanding), having raised nearly $9 billion from private investors at a $68 billion valuation with no IPO in sight, according to Crunchbase.

Snap Inc SNAP, the tech world’s newest darling, was on a similar path before going public, having raised over $2 billion from private markets, per Crunchbase. As the investing world continues to debate Snap’s merits as an investment, it’s worth checking in on the state of private-market startup investment around the world.

Global venture capital investing in 2016 came to $127 billion, according to KPMG.

North America

Investors poured nearly $70 billion into the U.S. startup market in 2016, according to PitchBook. However, that’s a decline from the nearly $80 billion invested in 2015, says KPMG.

Startups in Canada raised over $3.2 billion in 2016, according to the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association.

Mexico’s startup scene saw over four times as many VC deals in 2016 as in 2015, skyrocketing from 11 deals in 2015 to 47 in 2016, according to the Latin American Private Equity & Venture Capital Association.

South America

TechCrunch reports that $218 million in VC funding went to Latin America alone in the first half of 2016, and that investors directed nearly $600 million to the region in 2015.

Chinese internet giant Baidu BIDU led a $60 million raise for a Brazil-focused investment fund in late 2016, according to the Latin American Private Equity and Venture Capital Association.

Asia

Asian startup funding was over $43 billion in the first half of 2016, which is nearly as much as the entire startup sector raised in 2015, according to Tech In Asia.

Several areas of Asia in particular are hotbeds of fundraising activity. Israel, for example, saw startup investment to the tune of $4.8 billion in 2016, according to Jon Medved, the CEO of OurCrowd, a startup fundraising platform.

India alone saw $3.5 billion in investment in the first nine months of 2016, according to YourStory research. OurCrowd recently expanded to India, offering clients there the opportunity to invest in startups around the world.

Australia

Australian VCs raised record-breaking investment funds in 2016, with Startup Daily reporting that around $2 billion in private market capital is available for startups. AirTree Ventures raised the continent’s largest VC fund at $250 million, and led Australia’s largest VC investment in online lender Prospa.

OurCrowd also recently partnered with the National Australia Bank to offer its private bank clients access to global startup investing.

Europe

European investors funded startups to the tune of $15.7 billion in 2016, according to KPMG. One of the continent’s largest deals last year came when Spotify raised $1 billion in debt from its investors.

Africa

Startup funding in Africa shot up over 65 percent year-over-year from $2.5 billion in 2015 to $3.8 billion in 2016, the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association reported.

Antarctica

While the startup scene in Antarctica is pretty cold, there has surprisingly been some fundraising there, albeit for companies not located on the continent.

A 2015 meeting of Australian entrepreneurs in Antarctica raised nearly $700,000 for a medical charity in Zambia.

This diversity of startup investment has only made it easier for regular investors to get in on the action, according to Medved. OurCrowd offers equity crowdfunding in startups on four continents.