Monday, January 19, 2009

Pacific Northwest Venture Deals Plunge

Washington and Oregon venture capital deals slipped in Q4 to $141.96M, down significantly from $260.4M last quarter and $450M last year, according to a report released over the weekend by Dow Jones VentureSource. According to the quarterly venture capital report, Washington State had $113.81M in investments in the quarter, and Oregon had $28.15M.

On an annual basis, the report found that Washington State's venture capital investments fell below the billion dollar mark for the first time since 2005, to $906M in 93 deals, which was down 35% from 2007's $1.4 billion invested in 124 deals. Oregon dropped from $209.8M invested in 2007 to $186.56M.

Nationally, venture investments were down by 30% for the quarter to $5.5 billion, and 8% for the year to $28.8 billion. Among the few bright spots in investments was clean technology, which saw investments double for the year to nearly $3.6 billion.

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