🌐Fewer Small and Midsize Venture Funds Closing This Year Amid Sluggish Fundraising Environment
In 2024, only 118 U.S. venture funds under $500 million have closed, the lowest in years, as economic headwinds and a slowdown in tech IPOs and exits impact fundraising efforts. Despite fewer funds, some standout funds in sectors like cleantech and cybersecurity have successfully raised capital.
🌐Fewer Small and Midsize Venture Funds Closing This Year Amid Sluggish Fundraising Environment
In 2024, only 118 U.S. venture funds under $500 million have closed, the lowest in years, as economic headwinds and a slowdown in tech IPOs and exits impact fundraising efforts. Despite fewer funds, some standout funds in sectors like cleantech and cybersecurity have successfully raised capital.
In the past, it was noticed that through bulk SMSes, investors were induced to invest in or purchase the stocks of certain listed companies. At the start of 2018, the company attempted to launch an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) which would enable it to enable payments (and earn the cash that comes from doing so). The initial signals were promising, especially given Telegram’s user base is already fairly crypto-savvy. It raised an initial tranche of cash – worth more than a billion dollars – to help develop the coin before opening sales to the public. Unfortunately, third-party sales of coins bought in those initial fundraising rounds raised the ire of the SEC, which brought the hammer down on the whole operation. In 2020, officials ordered Telegram to pay a fine of $18.5 million and hand back much of the cash that it had raised. In December 2021, Sebi officials had conducted a search and seizure operation at the premises of certain persons carrying out similar manipulative activities through Telegram channels. Markets continued to grapple with the economic and corporate earnings implications relating to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “We have a ton of uncertainty right now,” said Stephanie Link, chief investment strategist and portfolio manager at Hightower Advisors. “We’re dealing with a war, we’re dealing with inflation. We don’t know what it means to earnings.” On February 27th, Durov posted that Channels were becoming a source of unverified information and that the company lacks the ability to check on their veracity. He urged users to be mistrustful of the things shared on Channels, and initially threatened to block the feature in the countries involved for the length of the war, saying that he didn’t want Telegram to be used to aggravate conflict or incite ethnic hatred. He did, however, walk back this plan when it became clear that they had also become a vital communications tool for Ukrainian officials and citizens to help coordinate their resistance and evacuations.
from fr
