Early-stage funding rounds* continued to dominate the global venture capital (VC) funding landscape during 2021, according to GlobalData, which notes that there were 6,448 Seed and 5,769 Series A financing rounds announced during the year — 12,217 in total. The leading data and analytics company also highlights that the number of these deals has increased significantly from 2020, which saw only 8,007 in total.

Looking more widely, the total number of deals in rounds ranging from Seed to Series J stood at 17,112, with a year-on-year growth of 53.7% over the 11,133 deals announced during 2020.

Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “This growth in early-stage deals is a positive sign for new start-ups. Top investors such as Sequoia Capital, to Y Combinator and Tencent Holdings have been participating in these early-stage rounds. However, it isn’t just early-stage deals seeing increases, as the number of growth, expansion, and late-stage funding rounds (Series B onwards) also increased.”

Growth, expansion and late-stage funding rounds collectively accounted for 28.6% of the total VC funding deal volume in 2021. The total number of these rounds increased by 56.6% from 3,126 deals in 2020 to 4,895 deals in 2021.

*Comprising Seed and Series A funding rounds