Early stage investment in agrifood tech startups reached $4.4 billion in the first half of 2017, posting a six-percent increase year-over-year increase reversing the downward trend of 2016 when agrifood tech investing dropped 17 percent to $6.9 billion from $8.3 billion in 2015. The entire report can be downloaded here.
Deal count continued to decline in the first half of 2017 however, falling 27 percent year-over-year to 369. This mirrored the global venture capital markets where deal activity reached a nine-year low in Q2, according to KPMG’s VenturePulse report.
However, KPMG global chairman Jonathan Lavender said that there were “many positive signs that the global VC market had reached a positive turning point” after a 10 percent drop in funding in 2016, and that investment had rebounded with some “mega-rounds” and several new unicorns.
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