Venture capital investments pick up with strong emphasis on mobile

Venture capital investments picked up significantly this quarter, with a 37 percent increase in funding and 3 percent increase in deals over the previous quarter. The period also saw strong emphasis on mobile investments and seed funding, according to a report released by CB Insights. There was a total of $ 8.1 billion in financing for 812 companies, the highest totals since Q2 of 2001.

About 13 percent of the activity — or 102 deals — was in the mobile sector, marking an all-time high, with 30 percent of those companies involved in photo or video technology.

“Without being too self-congratulatory, the Instagram Effect we speculated about in Q1 2012 seems to have taken shape as the mobile sector saw 102 deals, an all-time high… For skeptics, it may also be indicative of a VC herd mentality. Time will tell.”

Below is a breakdown of investments by dollar amounts in the different subsets of mobile and telecom industry:

Some other highlights from the report include:

Seed investing also hit an all-time high, with 22 percent of all deals happening at the seed stage this quarter, as compared to 12 percent from the same quarter in 2011.
The most successful sectors with respect to number of deals were internet companies with 46 percent, healthcare at 17 percent, and mobile and telecommunications at 13 percent. With respect to dollars in funding, the top sectors were internet at 38 percent and healthcare and “other” each at 19 percent.
50 percent of deals occurred at either seed funding or Series A rounds, although they made up only 19 percent of funding dollars.
California took the most number of deals per state at 45 percent of deals, up from 40 percent in Q1. New York remained in second place with 10 percent of deals, and Massachusetts in third place with 9 percent.

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