A Good Start? WA Companies Raised $57M in January, Up from $22M in Previous Month

Gregory T. Huang2/10/10Leave a CommentFollow @gthuang

Last month, companies based in Washington state raised a total of about $57 million in venture capital, in eight deals. That’s up from about $22 million in December 2009 (four companies), and $44 million (10 companies) in the month before that.

The VC stats are courtesy of private company intelligence platform CB Insights. See the table below for a full list of January venture financings.

In terms of dollars, the trend is going upward, but it’s notable that only one of the deals was a Series A financing—Seattle-based Exponential Entertainment raising $1.45 million for social gaming services.

The biggest financing was Bellevue’s Visible Technologies raising a $22 million Series C round to expand its global presence in brand monitoring and online reputation management. Next up was DataSphere, also in Bellevue, raising a $10.8 million Series B round as it continues to help media companies make money from hyperlocal websites. Interestingly, Bellevue-based Ignition Partners was involved in both financings.

The venture deals for the month break down pretty evenly by sector: three in Internet, two in healthcare, and arguably three in cleantech—though you could also call Lagotek home automation software, and Verdiem business software.

All in all, it’s a decent start to the year for Washington state companies. But the innovation community does need some early-stage funding, and it needs it fast. Here is the recap of January 2010 venture deals in Washington:

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Gregory T. Huang is Xconomy's National IT Editor and the Editor of Xconomy Boston. You can e-mail him at gthuang@xconomy.com, call him at 617-252-7323, or follow him on Twitter at @gthuang.