CB Insights and KPMG: funding to VC-backed companies worldwide reached a record $128.5B in 2015, but slowed down in Q4
Global Venture Capital Report - Q4 2015 — KPMG and CB Insights' Q4 2015 quarterly VC report highlights a banner year for venture capital funding …
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes the loop on a year CB Insights and KPMG had already flagged as exceptional: their Q3 2015 tally showed funding exceeding all of 2014 with $37B raised and 68 mega-rounds. The full-year figure of $128.5B makes 2015 a record, but the Q4 slowdown signals the peak was already passing when the annual number landed.
The shape of the decline matters more than its size. Within months, the same dataset showed [[a:871745|funding propped up by mega deals while quarterly deal counts fell to their lowest level since 2013]] — dollars concentrating into fewer, larger rounds rather than spreading across the market.
First-order effects
- Founders raising follow-on rounds enter 2016 facing a Q4 cooldown on top of the record year, with late-stage companies most exposed as mega-round appetite becomes the marginal source of new capital.
- CB Insights and KPMG's quarterly report series becomes the de facto scoreboard LPs and journalists use to call the turn in the cycle.
Second-order effects
- Investors respond to the slowdown by consolidating positions — fewer deals, bigger checks — which pressures mid-sized funds that cannot write $100M+ rounds and pushes smaller startups toward earlier exits or bridge financing.
- Corporate and crossover money gains relative leverage in the funding stack, a shift visible years later when corporate-backed funding hit $79B in H1 2021 per CB Insights.
Third-order effects
- If the mega-round-driven pattern holds, each subsequent cycle peaks higher but concentrates more narrowly — a trajectory confirmed by the later arc from ~$300B in 2020 to $643B globally in 2021, with $413B concentrated in late-stage and growth — leaving seed-stage deal flow structurally thinner relative to headline totals.
- The reporting itself hardens into infrastructure: quarterly VC dashboards from data firms become the reference point against which every boom and correction is measured.
The trend: Global venture capital moves through increasingly large but increasingly concentrated cycles, with headline records masking a steady shift of dollars into fewer mega-rounds at the top of the stack.