Startups raised $61 billion worldwide in January

Global venture funding completely smashed records last year, rising to $643 billion—up 92% from $335 billion in 2020, per Crunchbase.

What about 2022? In January, VCs continued to throw around cash like a parent on a vacation high, dishing out $61 billion, per Crunchbase. While not a record, that’s $20 billion more than the most prolific month of 2020, and up there with the biggest months ever.

Let’s take a look at a few emerging tech companies that grabbed a fraction of those funds last month:

• Eikon Therapeutics, a drug discovery startup helmed by a host of biotech veterans, raised $517.8 million Series B. The two-year-old, California–based startup will use the money to fuel its drug discovery and development program, which is based on a “super-resolution” microscopy technique that allows scientists to see the movement of individual molecules within a cell.
• Hydrostor, a long-duration energy storage (LDES) company, netted a $250 million investment round from Goldman Sachs. The Toronto–based company uses compressed air to store energy in “purpose-built caverns” for up to 12 hours, compared to around four hours for lithium-ion batteries. It currently has projects in California, Canada, and Australia.
• Exotec raised $335 million Series D to continue building out its warehouse automation products and services. The company helps its clients automate warehouse operations through proprietary hardware—like its autonomous warehouse bots—and software.
• OpenSea, the main NFT marketplace, raised a $300 million Series C that brought its valuation to $13.3 billion. It also faced some challenges last month: One user claimed 16 of their NFTs were stolen, leading OpenSea to intervene. Later in the month, a database outage caused some NFTs to disappear from its site. Both events prompted questions about the platform’s centralizing role in the decentralization-loving crypto world.