At the half-year point it has become clear that 2017 is the year money returned to the medical device sector.
Two venture investments of nearly $1bn have pushed the total raised by private medtech companies to unprecedented heights; the first half’s total of $3.8bn makes the previous six-month record – $2.3bn in the second half of 2011 – pale in comparison.
Total venture funding raised in the first quarter was over $2.5bn, more than twice the quarterly average over the past seven years, but the second quarter saw the fewest deals since the second quarter of 2006
The first half of this year saw the three biggest ever VC rounds in medtech, Grail, Verily and Guardant Health raising more than $2bn between them
The mega-merger is back in vogue with nine out of the top 10 deals in the first half worth $1bn or more, versus only five in the first half of 2016
2017 could see nearly $98bn spent on medtech M&A – double last year’s total – but with only around 150 transactions versus 234 in 2016
