Analysis: Series B valuations fell 50% from a $250M median in Q1 2022 to a $125M median in Q4 2022; Q4 2022’s VC activity by volume resembled that of Q2 2020 (Eric Newcomer/Newcomer)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Cloud storage startup Wasabi, which competes with AWS’ S3, raised a $250M Series D, or $125M equity, led by L2 Point, and $125M debt, at a $1.1B+ valuation  —  The cloud services sector is still dominated by Amazon and the other so-called “hyperscalers” — e.g. the Microsoft Azures, Google Cloud Platforms and IBM Clouds of the world.

Bloomberg:
PitchBook: in H1 2022, VC funding fell 8% YoY to $147.7B, pushing US startups to raise $17.1B in debt, up 7.5% YoY  —  Venture capitalists have spent years aggressively buying stakes in cash-burning technology startups, valuing more than 1,000 of them at at least $1 billion apiece, even though many remained far from turning a profit.

Chris Metinko / Crunchbase News:
Analysis: funding to VC-backed Web3 startups fell from $29.2B in 2021 to $21.5B in 2022; Q4 2022 funding fell 74% YoY from $9.3B to just $2.4B  —  While everything Web3-related dominated much of 2021 and the early part of last year, the end of 2022 showed a significant cooling of investor interest in the still young space.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Jasper, a service that leverages AI to generate marketing art and copy, raised $125M led by Insight Partners at a $1.7B valuation  —  As the enthusiasm around AI image and text generators grows, Jasper, a startup developing what it describes as an “AI content” platform, has raised $125 million at a $1.7 billion valuation.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Atomico: European startups are on track to raise $85B in 2022, down from $100B+ in 2021; the European tech industry lost ~$400B in value, dropping to $2.7T  —  Startups across Europe are on track to raise $85 billion in funding this year — a drop of $15 billion on 2021 levels …

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Tracxn: Indian startups raised $3B in Q3 2022, down 57% from Q2 and 80% YoY, in 334 deals, down from 674 in Q3 2021; Crunchbase: global funding dropped 53% YoY  —  We are getting a more realistic update on the startup funding landscape in India, and as is true elsewhere, all the figures are in red in the South Asian market.