VCs Give Boost To The Wireless Sector
Plenty of general news stories in recent weeks suggesting that venture investing is starting to pick up. If so, where are they investing? It appears that VCs are putting a fair amount of money into wireless companies these days. In the first quarter of 2003, $1.077 billion was raised by 170 wireless startups, which is only slightly more than the previous quarter, but the analysts behind the report still found it “encouraging”. The vast majority of the money went to later stage companies, though 5% of the money went to first round deals. Deals in WiFi companies increased from $70 million to $123 million – suggesting one area within wireless that’s getting plenty of VC attention (though, even within WiFi, there was a shift from funding the chip makers to funding the systems makers). Not exactly boomtime-type numbers, but certainly not terrible either.
