Research: in 2018, startups in the SF Bay Area raised $22.4B across 87 $100M+ funding rounds; startups in the rest of US raised $24.9B across 103 $100M+ rounds
Joanna Glasner / Crunchbase News :
Context & Ripple Effects
This Crunchbase analysis captured venture geography at its most even in recent memory: in 2018, Bay Area startups raised $22.4B across 87 $100M+ rounds while the rest of the US raised slightly more, $24.9B across 103 such rounds — effectively parity for the country's dominant hub. That balance did not hold. PitchBook later found Silicon Valley's share falling to its lowest since 2012 in 2022's $74.9B total, before the AI boom snapped capital back: of the ~$178B US startups raised in 2024's $314B global total, $90B went to Bay Area companies.
First-order effects
- In 2018, founders outside the Bay Area could credibly raise $100M+ rounds on par with the hub — 103 mega-rounds versus the Bay Area's 87 meant late-stage capital was genuinely national, not concentrated.
Second-order effects
- Regional ecosystems built during that dispersion window kept scaling afterward — Florida grew to $9.7B across 601 deals in 2022 even as California, Massachusetts, and New York all fell 40%+ — but by 2026 PitchBook counted California startups raising ~$366B, more than triple all other 49 states combined (per the WSJ), undoing the parity this data showed.
Third-order effects
- The pattern suggests mega-round geography is cyclical rather than secularly dispersing: capital spreads out in broad bull markets and reconcentrates around whichever technology wave dominates late-stage check sizes, with AI currently playing that role.
The trend: Venture capital's geography oscillates with technology waves — dispersing toward parity in broad funding cycles like 2018, then reconcentrating in the Bay Area whenever a single theme, now AI, absorbs the mega-rounds.