The recent financings of Halifax-based startups Affinio and Analyze Re highlight one facet of the innovation ecosystem in Atlantic Canada that is healthier in 2013 than last year – the number and diversity of major institutional fundraisings.

In 2012, the startup scene in Atlantic Canada was characterized by a lot of exciting companies receiving seed funding – usually $200,000 to $2 million -- to finance the early stages of their growth. That was great, but it also meant that there were a cluster of young companies all scrambling for follow-on financing, each of them looking for rounds of more than $1 million.

Some are finding it a problem, but there have been some interesting financings in 2013, and the word on the street suggests there are going to be more in the next two months. Both new and more mature companies are reporting these seven- or eight-figure funding rounds, and they’re coming from various types of institutions. So it’s difficult to develop a theme in what’s happening in fundraising in the region, but the diversity itself is encouraging.

The largest deal this year has been Toronto private equity firm Imperial Capital’s $17 million investment in Halifax pharmaceutical services company STI Technologies Ltd. It included the buyout of several existing investors, including VC fund GrowthWorks Atlantic.

That’s followed by Karma Gaming of Halifax, which has raised a total of $5 million this year from: Rho Ventures, a leading VC fund based in New York, Silicon Valley and Montreal; Vanedge of Vancouver; and Halifax’s own Innovacorp.

Fredericton- and Washington, D.C.-based data analytics company Introhive has also raised about $3 million with investments from Salesforce of San Francisco and Build Ventures of Halifax. (The total value of the round is $5 million, but about $2 million closed in late 2012.)

Neurodyn Inc., the Charlottetown biotech developing early treatments for neurological diseases, raised $1.5 million. The main investors were Regis Duffy BioScience Fund Inc. of Charlottetown and Mertz Holdings, a family-owned investment fund based in Houston, Texas. NSBI Venture Capital of Halifax invested $1.5 million in Health Outcomes Worldwide of New Waterford, which has produced healthcare outcomes measurement software.

Build also invested $1.5 million in another analytics company, Affinio, a Halifax-based social media analytics company. Analyze Re, a Halifax company that provides risk assessment for reinsurers, raised almost $1.4 million from Innovacorp, BDC Venture Capital of Montreal and Rho.

So if we add up all the $1-million-plus deals reported so far this year we arrive at a figure of more than $30 million from venture capital funds and other institutional or corporate investors. That doesn’t include the wave of smaller seed funding from groups like Innovacorp and New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, which have been healthy this year.

When these smaller deals are added in, and we tally up the deals expected to close by the end of the year, Atlantic Canada will probably boast about $40 million to $50 million in venture capital funding this year. That compares with $26.6 million in 2012.

Above and beyond the numbers, the important factor is that the investors come from across the continent – Montreal, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco, Houston. That means Atlantic Canadian startups are extending their networks into these centres, which can only help their future prospects.