Venture funding slides as IPOs go into deep freeze

The latest venture capital numbers for the second quarter are in, and biotech is down--along with the rest of the tech crowd.

VC groups invested $1.1 billion in biotech in the second quarter, says the report from the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers. That's a 14 percent drop from the same period for the year before. And less than a fourth of that money went to early-stage ventures, a continuation of a distinct shift toward later-stage companies.

Some analysts say that the blight afflicting biotech IPOs and M&As--with investors leery of the kind of risk presented by drug developers at a time of market turmoil--is likely to have a growing impact on venture groups assessing their potential exit strategies. Start-up acquisitions overall dropped 28 percent, an ominous sign.

On the bright side, the downward trend can't compare to the plunge in VC activity seen after the dot-com meltdown. And venture capital investments overall stayed steady at $7.4 billion.

- read the report from USA Today
- read the story from the Washington Post

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