Health Care No. 1 in Venture Capital Funding

Investors continue to bet big on health care innovation, particularly in the pharma and biotech sectors. Through the third quarter this year, U.S. health care companies are topping all other business areas in venture capital funding, according to a report from PitchBook.

Health care venture capital funding so far this year has topped $23 billion, comprising 27.8 percent of all venture capital funding through the first nine months. Modern Healthcare reports that pharma and biotech companies are attracting the lion’s share of venture capital, while investments in medical devices remain stable.

The PitchBook report also notes that large sums of money are flowing into fewer, larger deals. The number of deals with value exceeding $50 million reached 378 rounds through the first three quarters vs. 292 deals in all of 2017.

Perhaps best illustrating this trend is an analysis PitchBook conducted for Forbes in July, which showed that four companies each raised more than $130 million. The largest of these investments — $300 million — went to the personal genomics and biotech company 23andMe. The other three biggest investments were attributed to firms developing treatments for inflammation and autoimmune diseases, and drugs to fight Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.