According to data from startup tracking agency PitchBook, 3,200 startups have gone out of business in 2023, and before they went bankrupt, they raised a total of more than 27 billion US dollars in venture capital funds.
According to Ernst & Young (EY), this figure is close to what startups raised from venture capital in the third quarter of 2023 ($29.8 billion).
However, the $272 billion figure probably underestimates the true scale of money burning, as many companies will go out of business without any publicity. Notably, this figure does not include significant losses for publicly traded companies or companies that have been acquired.
Wework, for example, raised more than $11 billion before the IPO and filed for bankruptcy in November last year. The college grant startup Frank was acquired by J.P. Morgan in 2021 for $175 million, then shut down in January of this year due to customer data fraud.
This year has seen a series of high-profile startup failures. Pizza startup Zume raised nearly $500 million, but due to difficulties in implementing its pizza automation technology, the company shut down in June this year.
Cargo startup Convoy, once hailed as the “Uber of the trucking industry,” raised more than $1 billion, but closed in November.
Tom Loverro (Tom Loverro), a general partner at investment firm IVP, called this year's startup woes a “mass extinction event” for startups.
These problems stem in part from reduced funding. Compared to 2022, venture capital has dried up. According to EY data, the financing scale for the first nine months of this year was US$104.5 billion, compared to US$183.9 billion in the same period last year.