Despite a Nasty Climate for VC Investing, One SF Startup Just Got $525 Million

Economic conditions continue to dampen venture capital investments, and nowhere is that trend more apparent than in San Francisco. 

As one of the nation’s top cities for startup innovation, SF companies attracted only one-fifth of the VC dollars they received last year, dropping from $5 billion last January to $1.1 billion last month, according to the latest data from PitchBook. The number of deals also dove precipitously, from 219 last year to only 56 in January 2023.

The good news? Three San Francisco startups landed rounds of more than $100 million in the last two months.

Though recent headlines focus on the booming AI scene, SF’s top startups of the last two months operate in the realm of sustainability and green energy. The trading platform for global environmental commodities, Xpansiv, received an eye-popping $525 million, while Redaptive, a solution for renewable energy savings and adoption, attracted $200 million. 

The city’s third-largest VC investment went to Apogee Therapeutics, a biotech firm that launched with a $149 million round to develop novel drugs for inflammatory and immunological disorders.