Big bucks for later-stage startups, but early-stage deals make up the bulk

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Hello reader,

Just the other day, I was just speaking to a VC firm’s partner about the state of funding – and VCs’ appetites – in 2024. He mentioned that it wasn’t looking all that great for startups in the later stages – think series B and later – but there’s still a good deal (heh) of funding activity in series A and earlier.

Looking at this week’s funding deals, I find it interesting that he’s basically right on the money. Sure, the top five deals for the week mostly come from startups that are series B and later, but that’s probably because deal sizes would usually be larger at later stages anyway.

As for the rest of the deals this week, a quick scan of our internal spreadsheet shows that a large majority of them are for startups in the seed or pre-series A stage.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

You can find all other important investment deals that happened in the last few days in our weekly funding news wrap-up.

Let’s dive into the biggest deals and M&As that recently took place.

The biggest deals by market

🇮🇳 Indian fintech platform Dezerv has raised US$32 million in series B money from Accel Partners, Elevation Capital, Matrix Partners India, and Premji Invest.

🇰🇷 Poen, a South Korean cleantech startup, has closed a US$27.3 million series B round. Investors include DSC Investment, E& Venture Partners, Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance, K2 Investment Partners, KDB Bank, L&S Venture Capital, and Lotte Ventures.

🇨🇳 DST is a Chinese firm that provides operations services for new-energy logistics vehicles. It netted US$20 million for its series E+ round from Twin Towers Ventures.

🇻🇳 Nami Energy, a Vietnamese startup that offers clean energy solutions, has gotten a US$10 million investment from Clime Capital.

🇵🇰 Pakistani social commerce platform DealCart has raised US$3 million in seed funding from 500 Global, Evolution VC Partners, Khyber Venture Partners, Rayn Capital, Shorooq Partners, and Sturgeon Capital.

Here’s the complete list of this week’s funding chart: 70 deals worth over US$186 million.

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