Puget Sound startups pull in a decade-high US$3.5 billion in Q3 as Oregon funding trails last year

Venture capital investment in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area reached US$3.5 billion across 94 deals in the third quarter, the region’s highest quarter in at least a decade, according to PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor data reported by 425 Business. That was up from US$943.6 million in 81 deals in the second quarter and US$1 billion in 73 deals a year earlier.

Kent-based Stoke Space led with the initial close of a US$1 billion Series E, followed by Bellevue’s Temporal at US$550 million, Everett’s Helion at US$500 million and Redmond’s Starcloud at US$420 million. Hubble Network, Brinc, BrainChild Bio, InduPro and Mind rounded out the region’s biggest deals.

Oregon is moving the other way. Venture investment in Oregon companies totalled US$640.9 million through September, down from US$1.14 billion last year, the Portland Business Journal reported on Friday.

Nationally, PitchBook counted US$98.4 billion across at least 3,640 deals in the quarter, with the San Francisco Bay Area accounting for 766 deals worth almost US$41 billion. Nizar Tarhuni, PitchBook’s executive vice president of research and market intelligence, said much of the record capital has gone to frontier AI model companies, and NVCA president and CEO Bobby Franklin said emerging and mid-sized venture firms are finding it harder to raise new funds.