The amount of money people put into U.S. venture capital investments nearly returned to pre-recession levels in the second quarter, with most deals going to information technology companies, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.
The market research group said venture investors put US$7.7 billion into U.S. companies in the second quarter, the highest quarterly total since the third quarter of 2008, when investments hit $8.4 billion. The number of deals done in the second quarter, 744, beat the 699 deals from the third quarter of 2008.
Last year during the second quarter, a time when the global economy was just starting to recover, venture investments totaled $6.1 billion.
"Deal activity and capital invested in venture-backed companies is once again near levels seen before the start of the economic recession in 2008," said Jessica Canning, global research director for Dow Jones VentureSource, in a statement on Saturday.
Information technology won the second quarter's highest deal count with 231 deals worth $1.9 billion, while healthcare drew the most money, $2.7 billion in 201 deals.
Software took most of the money aimed at IT, in 156 deals worth $908 million.
The largest single venture deal of the second quarter, $350 million, went to the energy sector's Better Place, a Palo Alto, California company that makes products related to electric vehicles, such as batteries, battery switching stations, charging products, software and more.
"The giants of Silicon Valley are typically of the information technology type, from Google to Intel, Facebook to Microsoft. Now that the cleantech industry is running alongside the IT industry as the high-growth place to be, we see human talent migrating from one industry to the other," Better Place says on its website.