2022 concluded with a record $9.67B in venture capital (VC) funding flooding into built world innovations (338 deals tracked on BuiltWorlds Venture Dashboard in 2022), an 56% year-over-year (YoY) increase in early-stage fundraising, bucking the public market’s downward spiral. 2022 marks the stock market’s worst-performing year in over a decade, with the S&P 500 sliding nearly 20% from where it left off in 2021.
The built environment has been a growing target for entrepreneurial efforts and unicorn-chasing investors with the obvious lapses in sustainability & digital efficiencies as well as an economically agnostic restructuring tailwind supporting the broader sector. There is a strong case for tech-driven value-creation in the built-world startup ecosystem going into 2023.
In the fourth quarter alone, BuiltWorlds tracked 125 deals totaling $3.24 billion of funding, depicting massive YoY growth of 119% & 163%, respectively. At the same time, the S&P 500, the US public equity benchmark, concluded the year in bear market territory (>20% off the highs touched in the first couple of days of 2022 trading).