General Catalyst was the busiest lead investor in US startup funding in October, ranking first by both number of rounds and aggregate deal value. The firm led at least nine known rounds.
Lightspeed Venture Partners was second with eight lead rounds. Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz followed with seven each. Accel also ranked high across several lists. A chart of the month's most active lead or co-lead investors covers 16 firms with three or more known deals.
By value, rounds that General Catalyst led or co-led totalled $5.1 billion. The biggest contributors were a $2.1 billion round for Re:Build, a startup that partners with manufacturers on product design and production, and a $2 billion Series A for Axiom Solutions International, a cloud and power infrastructure spin-out of manufacturing provider Flex.
J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which co-led the Re:Build financing, ranked next by aggregate value. Koch Equity, a co-lead on the Axiom deal, followed. The five co-lead investors in fintech unicorn Ramp's $1.9 billion Series G came after them.
On total participation, Y Combinator was again the busiest investor in rounds of $5 million or more. The accelerator typically joins follow-on rounds as a non-lead backer for companies from its programme. Andreessen Horowitz took part in at least 22 qualifying rounds, and General Catalyst in 17.
No October round came close to the record-setting financings for OpenAI and Anthropic seen earlier this year. Even so, the rankings point to an active funding environment in which investors are still writing large cheques.
