Drop in funding is a warning to startups

For the first time in three years, startup funding is dropping.

The numbers are stark. Investments in US tech startups plunged 23 percent over the past three months, to $62.3 billion, the steepest fall since 2019, according to figures released Thursday by PitchBook, which tracks young companies. Even worse, in the first six months of the year, startup sales and initial public offerings — the primary ways these companies return cash to investors — plummeted 88 percent, to $49 billion, from a year ago. READ MORE