New York State
Introduction
New York is the 2nd most important state ecosystem in the US, after California. When measured by venture capital investment and value creation.
More than 200 unicorns have been built in New York. Many global technology firms call the state home, including one of the most important technological innovators in the last 100 years, with IBM. And New York City is the #2 hub for venture capital activity globally, trailing only the Bay area, and raising more investment in the last five years than London, Boston, Bengaluru and Beijing.
This guide runs through the need-to-know stats and trends in technology, innovation and entrepreneurship for the state of New York.
Venture Capital
Venture capital investment in New York State reached $30B in 2022, a 40% drop from 2021. While this is a significant fall from the heights of 2021, it is still 76% higher than in 2020.
New York City continues to make up the largest share of the total venture capital investment in the state, accounting for 93% of total investment in 2022, however, Upstate investment has been growing faster that NYC investment in the last five years.
NYC vs New York State
The landscape of venture capital investment in New York City versus the rest of the State is quite varied.
New York City, a global centre of finance and media, over-indexes for investment into startups operating in both industries. 25% of all New York City VC investment goes to fintech startups, compared to ~16% globally. In 2022, Media was the fourth most funded sector in New York City, while it was eighth globally.
In the rest of the State, Health is by the far the most funded startup sector. In addition, some more capital intensive and infrastructure-leaning industries including Energy, Telecoms and Transportation find their place outside the metropolis.
By city
$49.1B was raised by New York city startup in 2021, an all-time high. 2022’s total of 28B was also 69% higher than five years earlier, despite a big global pullback in venture capital in 2022.
However, some of New York’s smaller civic centres have been growing much faster, albeit from a very low base. Startup ecosystems in cities and towns like North Hempstead, Rochester, Schenectady and Ithaca have been emerging with high levels of venture capital in recent years.
By industry
Likewise beyond the most funded industries, New York has some emerging startup segments in Home Living, Transportation and Education where venture capital investment has been growing fast.
Below you can review the leading industries and sub-industries in terms of VC investment, over the past few years, into New York state headquartered startups:
By stage
Although venture capital totals fell significantly after a global peak in 2021, early-stage investment has been largely unaffected. New York startups raised over $3B in rounds of under $15M in 2022. The greatest pullback has been at late-stage; the sum of megarounds of over $100M per ticket, halved between 2021 and 2022.
Early stage investment has more than doubled over the past five years with a positive trend observed over the past decade.
Similarly to early stage investment, breakout stage investment has also seen rapid growth over the past five years.
While most late stage investment is concentrated in New York City, the rest of the state has still attracted over $4B of late stage investment over the past 5 years.
Top Investors
Of investors headquartered in New York, Tiger Global, Insight Partners and FJ Labs have been the most active in the last five years.
Tiger Global also tops the list of investors (based anywhere) for the most investments in New York based startups, followed by Bessemer, Gaingels and BoxGroup.
Filter below to see the most active investors in New York by stage.
Key universities
New York State is home to several prestigious universities that have established themselves as leaders in science, technology, and entrepreneurship, including big name universities of NYU, Cornell and Columbia. But Rochester Institute of Technology alumni have also founded three unicorns. And Parsons School of Design, Pace University, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Fordham University all have more than 50 startups founders among their former students.
Ranked by affiliated startups
Patents
By size
Below are the top categories by the number of patents granted in 2021 per superclass and subclass by companies based in New York State.
By growth
In the last decade, some of the fastest growing areas of innovation and patent filing in New York have included Machine Learning, Blockchain and Immunogenics.
NYC vs New York State
The most prolific patent areas for New York are in the classes of Information and Semiconductors. This can be easily explained by who is doing the filing, considering IBM is headquartered in Westchester County.
Subclass patents
Top companies
IBM - the Colossus of Armonk - has filed over for over 100k patents since 1990, by far the most of any company based in New York State.
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