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Venture Firms Invest Around $1.6 Billion In Q2 2010 In SoCal

An analysis of Q2's venture capital deals and investment activity in Southern California find that venture capitalists invested around $1.6 billion in the area in Q2, up slightly from around $1.4 billion invested in Q1, and up from $1.0 billion in Q2 of last year. The analysis was based on tracking of venture capital, angel, and private equity deals by socalTECH.com, which maintains its own proprietary database of local and national venture capital deals and dealmakers. The deal totals were significantly boosted in the quarter by activity across Biopharmaceuticals ($247.2M in investment), Energy ($190.2M in investments) and Medical Deviecs ($128.1M in investments in Q2).

The most active investors in the region, by number of investments, were the Tech Coast Angels (9 tracked deals); followed by clean tech investor Angeleno Investors (3 deals). Other active firms included Bessemer Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Palomar Ventures, Clearstone Venture Partners, Domain Associates, The Westly Group, Life Science Angels, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Idealab, Versant Ventures, Anthem Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and First Round Capital.

Among the bigger deals included in the total were $38.4M for Torrance-based Amonix, $27.75M for Westlake Village-based Row 44, $31.0M for Los Angeles-based Hautelook, as well as various investments in Irvine-based Fisker Automotive and Santa Monica-based Coda Automotive.

PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association, and VentureOne will release their quarterly nationwide results of venture activity later this month. Numbers from those firms usually differs--sometimes drastically--due to sources of information, timing of funding events, and classification of data. socalTECH.com's data also includes a number of partially complete rounds, exposed via regulatory filings and not yet announced.