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Rocket fuel: Seattle-area startups raise a record $3.5B as national VC funding cools

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Rocket fuel: Seattle-area startups raise a record $3.5B as national VC funding cools

Seattle-area startups raised $3.5 billion in venture capital in the third quarter, the most in any quarter going back at least a decade, led by big rounds for Kent-based rocket maker Stoke Space, Bellevue developer platform Temporal and Everett fusion company Helion.

That’s more than triple the $1 billion raised in the region in the same quarter a year earlier, according to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. It’s also more than $1 billion above the previous quarterly high of about $2.4 billion, reached in late 2018 and again in late 2022.

Most of the money went to a handful of companies building physical things: rockets, satellites, spacecraft and fusion power plants. Three space companies in the region raised $1.6 billion combined: Stoke, Redmond-based Starcloud and Seattle’s Hubble Network.

Nationally, the trend went the other way. U.S. venture funding fell 40% from the prior quarter, to $98.4 billion, as the giant rounds for frontier AI labs that drove the first half of the year tapered off.

Seattle ranked seventh among U.S. metro areas for venture dollars in the quarter. The Bay Area led with $40.7 billion, followed by Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Boston and Denver. Denver’s $4.2 billion came largely from a single $3.9 billion round for AI data center developer Crusoe.

The total includes Helion’s $500 million round, which the company announced in June but PitchBook counts in the third quarter. Even without it, the quarter would still be the region’s biggest on record.



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