Biotech VC Funding Rises As Fewer Companies Get More Dollars

Public company valuations continue to slide as stock market investors shift priorities, but private biotechnology firms are attracting near record-breaking levels of venture capital with one pretty important caveat: More money is being invested in fewer US companies, especially at the earliest stages of business formation.

The $1.81bn in venture capital invested in US biotech firms during the first quarter of 2016 was the sixth highest quarterly total ever, but with 118 companies raising VC cash, it was far from the highest number of deals in any given quarter, according to the MoneyTree Report from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers based on Thomson Reuters data that goes back to 1995. And despite the large dollar volume raised by biotechs during the first three months of this year, only $359.1m was labeled as a "first sequence" investment, which was lower than any quarter in 2015.

Some recently funded biotech companies illustrate the focus of a lot of venture capital these days: big Series A and...