Only five investors made more than six investments each in the month of May, per Crunchbase. The most active U.S. investors in the month were Gaingels, Soma Capital, FJ Labs, General Catalyst, and Salesforce Ventures. Investors have drastically reduced their pace of investments compared to last year, suggesting that investors are taking a cautious approach to their investments. Investors are expected to remain cautious with deployment until the public markets recover, interest rates decrease, and exit opportunities become available. In May 2022, the top two investors, Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global, made 23 and 20 investments each, respectively. The two combined made seven investments in the last month, starkly contrasting their deal-making pace from last year. Khosla Ventures and Insight Partners made two investments each, an 80% drop over the 10 deals inked in June 2022. Gaingels made eight investments in May, the most notable of which was leading a $3M seed round for Los Angeles-based customized meal kit startup VitaBowl. Gaingels has been a consistent VC investor, constantly inking more than 10 deals every month in 2022. It last inked 10 deals in February earlier this year. Soma Capital made the highest number of investments so far this year, participating in seven deals. The San Francisco-based VC firm backed sales tax tech startup Zamp, payments and expense tracking fintech Slash, and asset-backed credit card provider Pesto. Additionally, Soma participated in a $2.1M seed funding round for AI and machine learning startup Revv. New York-based VC firm FJ Labs made seven investments in May, bringing its total investments this year to 30. FJ Labs participated in an undisclosed Series A round in athletic products marketplace startup SidelineSwap. The round was led by eBay Ventures. General Catalyst has made 19 investments so far this year, six of which were added in May. Notable deals include healthcare-focused generative AI startup Hippocratic AI's $50M seed round and healthcare software make Adonis' $17.3M Series A round. Hippocratic AI is looking to develop the safest artificial health general intelligence platform. General Catalyst led or co-led the most funding rounds in the month. Salesforce's VC arm, Salesforce Ventures, made nearly 12 deals in the past three months, adding six deals to the tally in May itself. The firm participated alongside Google in AI startup Anthropic's $450M Series C round led by Spark Capital, which valued the firm at $4.1B. Anthropic is developing AI assistant Claude, which is a direct competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Leading Anthropic's Series C round gave Spark Capital the honor of leading the largest deal sizes in May. Within incubators and accelerators, Y Combinator made 12 investments in the month of May. |
