Retail Technology Sector Matures As Funding Shifts to Mid and Late Stages

As we previously noted, retail technology has shown consistent growth over the past few years. Now we are taking a more detailed look on our retail technology report and research platform to examine its funding by round. From our analysis, we can conclude that the retail technology sector has been maturing over the past few years.

This conclusion comes from two takeaways:

• Funding amount percentages are shifting to mid and late-stage events
• Funding count percentages are shifting to mid and late-stage events

We’ll explore these takeaways in some more detail below.

To help set the stage, the graphic below highlights retail technology funding amounts over time. As you can see, the sector’s overall funding experienced a burst of growth from 2012 to 2017.

Retail Technology Funding by Quarter

Retail Technology Funding Amount Percentages Shifting to Later-Stage Events

Let’s examine the retail technology funding amounts by round as a percentage of the total, which show changes independent of the total funding amount by year.

Retail Technology Funding Amount Percentages

The above graph shows that the funding amount percentages in Seed and Series A rounds dropped relative to the other round types. In addition, the funding amount percentages in all the other rounds stayed constant or increased.

Specifically, Seed and Series A funding amount percentages fell by over half from 32% to around 13%. On the other hand, Series C and Late Stage funding amount percentages grew from 24% to over 40% during the same time period.

We see that the funding amount percentages by round indicate a shift from early-stage to mid and late-stage events from 2012 to 2017. Would the funding event count graph show the same trend? Let’s examine that in the next section to find out.

Retail Technology Funding Count Percentages Shifting to Later-Stage Events As Well

The below graph shows the retail technology funding counts by round as a percentage of total events.

Retail Technology Funding Count Percentages

This graph supports our previous conclusion from the funding amount graph. In particular, Seed and Series A funding count percentages dropped significantly from 80% to under 50%. The funding count percentages in all other rounds increased by various magnitudes from 2012 to 2017.

Conclusion: Retail Technology Sector Matures As Funding Shifts to Later Stages

In summary, we have seen retail technology funding amounts and events shift from the early-stage rounds to the later-stage rounds. These observations led us to conclude that the retail technology is in the maturing phase.

To learn more about our complete retail technology report and research platform, visit us at www.venturescanner.com or contact us at [email protected].