In the wake of Halifax clean concrete startup CarbonCure closing the largest venture capital round in Nova Scotia history, Atlantic Canada’s VC numbers have surpassed the first half totals for 2022 and are near striking distance of the sum for all of 2022. 

Led by CarbonCure’s US$80 million or C$105.7 million deal, the total money raised so far this year by East Coast companies has now reached a gangbusters $181.2 million, just two weeks into the second half of the year. Entrevestor calculated the totals by adding up the value of announced deals and analysing data from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association’s first-quarter 2023 Canadian Venture Capital Market Overview. 

That $181.2 million figure -- which occured in spite of general tightening of VC markets in Canada -- is almost four-fifths of the $230 million total VC investment for all of 2022. 

Entrevestor’s own 2022 startup fundraising data, which includes not just venture capital raises but also angel deals and money raised from public markets, shows that the funding in 2022  was $315.1 million. But comparing this year’s fundraising totals to that figure demands the inclusion of a US$25 million or C$33.4 million share sale by Halifax advanced manufacturer Meta Materials in April. That bring’s 2023’s sum thus far to $214.6 million, or more than two-thirds of 2022’s full-year number.

CarbonCure, a global leader in carbon dioxide removal technologies for the concrete industry, said in a statement Tuesday that its round was led by Swiss impact fund Blue Earth Capital, a new investor in the company, and included Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a returning backer spearheaded by names like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg.

Other returning investors included Taronga Ventures, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund and 2150. Strategic investors BH3 Growth Equity and Samsung Ventures, both of which are themselves deploying CarbonCure’s technology, also joined the round.

The CarbonCure deal is an outlier amid an economic landscape driven partly by hawkish central bankers, that saw national fundraising slide to $1.2 billion in the first quarter, compared to $4.5 billion for the same period the year prior, according to the CVCA’s data. Those figures mirror a global decline of almost 50 per cent in the first half to $173.9 billion internationally, according to data from PitchBook.

Led by CEO Robert Niven, CarbonCure has become a darling of the cleantech space, not just in Atlantic Canada, but also in the United States, with Bill Gates speaking of the company's strengths a few years ago on the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes. Cleantech companies accounted for just eight percent of Atlantic Canadian funding last year, according to Entrevestor's databank, but one such enterprise now likely ranks amoung the most valuable businesses the region has ever produced.

In Atlantic Canada, the CVCA reports that startups raised $57 million in the first quarter, down from $64 million the year prior. But since then, St. John’s-based Trophi.ai has raised $3.3 million, Pasadena, Newfoundland and Labrador medtech company Swiftsure Innovations has raised $2.3 million, artificial intelligence startup Spellbook has raised US$10.9 million or C$14.8 million at the time and Fredericton’s Picketa Systems has raised $1.4 million, in addition to the CarbonCure deal.