Pittsburgh’s VC scene kicks off 2024 with a solid start, thanks to one impressive deal

Pittsburgh venture capital investment ended last year on a higher note than it started, and the upward trend continues in the first quarter of 2024 — despite a low number of deals.

According to the latest Venture Monitor report, released quarterly by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), companies from Pittsburgh and the surrounding suburbs raised $259 million across 16 deals in Q1.

It was the fewest number of deals in a quarter that the region has seen in a long time — since Q4 of 2017. But one Lawrenceville-based health tech company’s $150 million raise kept the total deal flow on par for what we’ve been expecting of the region over the last few years.

Abridge, creators of an app that records and condenses conversations between patients and doctors, is responsible for more than half of this quarter’s VC dollars. The company closed this large round only a few months after its $30 million Series B in October 2023.

COO Julia Chou Chapin told Technical.ly the company touts its Pittsburgh roots, access to resources and its proximity to other local life sciences companies.

“The combination of healthcare and AI influences in Pittsburgh are what made this company really special,” Chapin said.

Including Abridge, all five of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area’s largest deals this quarter are in the healthcare and information technology sectors.

As always, it’s important to note: These figures may vary slightly after publication, as some deals aren’t accounted for until weeks after quarterly VC reports are published, or PitchBook may find errors in its data.

Pittsburgh’s biggest VC deals in Q1 2024

Here are the region’s five largest deals to start the year, according to PitchBook data:

1. Abridge’s $150 million investment
2. Blackbird Health, a hybrid mental health provider for children and young adults, closed $17 million of its $23 million Series A in February.
3. Gather AI, with a platform that uses autonomous drones to track products in warehouses, raised a $17 Series A-1 round in March.
4. Novasenta, a novel therapeutic development company, raised $15 million in February, according to PitchBook’s data.
5. G2 Reverse Logistics, a profit recovery company, secured a $9.6 million seed round led by Dell Technologies Capital.

National venture capital trends

Pittsburgh’s steady start mirrors what we see in the rest of the US, the PitchBook report says — the overall numbers aren’t too exciting, but the market is still leveling out.

The nation’s total VC deal count was $36.6 billion across 3,925 total deals, relatively on pace with Q1 of last year, if not a little “to the left of the bell curve than usual,” NVCA President Bobby Franklin said in the report’s executive summary. The numbers are nothing to worry about, he continued, saying the VC business cycle has been “effectively reset” in recent years, and is leveling out in 2024.

Kyle Standford, one of PitchBook’s lead VC analysts, called Q1 a “calm” quarter in the report, saying that the nation is experiencing the opposite of what Pittsburgh saw with one large deal — not very many outsized deals were closed, but overall deal count still stayed “relatively” high.

Valuations did rise, likely from a stronger performance of the public markets over the last few months, and the idea that already strong companies will be able to continue to raise in a slower market. Stanford did note that some market uncertainties and inflation have pushed the likelihood of lowered interest rates to the second half of 2024, and a recession “remains a possibility.”

While Pittsburgh saw a large raise this quarter bringing its total dollars up, it will be interesting to see if a higher deal count and smaller check size levels out the deals in the next quarter. Standford cautions that we’re probably in for a slower, steadier year than the past few.

Said Standford: “We don’t expect deal activity to pick up in a meaningful way in the near term.”