Baltimore hits $90.9M in VC activity to start 2025
This year's first quarter saw $90.9 million invested across 19 deals throughout the Baltimore metropolitan statistical area, according to PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association's latest quarterly Venture Monitor report. That's about 50% lower than the last quarter, which saw $179.2 million across 15 deals — meaning check sizes are typically lower across more deals.
HarborLink, a late-stage telecommunications infrastructure company, nabbed approximately half of the total money in the region this quarter.
These statistics are not surprising to Jeff Cherry, the founder of the Baltimore-based accelerator Conscious Venture Lab. In addition to leading the program's parent organization, the Novella Center for Entrepreneurship, Cherry also serves as the CEO and managing general partner of the early-stage investment firm Conscious Venture Partners, which has funded several alums of the accelerator.
There's too much money 'on the sidelines,' he explained — in other words, there is wealth to be invested in companies, but limited partners aren't writing many checks to put money in funds.
Investing in venture capital is risky, Cherry acknowledged. Liquidity has been lacking over the last decade, with few exits or IPOs. But more deals need to get done, and those funds should also be from the Baltimore region.
'There's not enough money, local money, coming into venture as there should be,' Cherry told Technical.ly, 'in order to continue to catalyze the great things that are happening here.'
He's about to start raising money for Conscious Venture Partners' third fund, and is bracing for difficulty.
'We know it's going to be a challenge,' Cherry said. 'It's going to be an uphill battle.'
Baltimore's VC flow was also slow at the beginning of 2024. In that year's first quarter, the region's companies accrued $89.8 million across 20 deals — nearly identical figures to Q1 2025. 2023 and 2022 started with $78.3 million and $77.7 million, respectively.
This isn't unique to Baltimore, though: Cherry noted that deal flow is down in other parts of the Mid-Atlantic. Philadelphia saw a dip in activity, and DC's numbers were lower this quarter compared to the end of last year. Contrarily, Pittsburgh saw historical numbers, though 90% of the total funds went to two companies.
AI strength amid anti-DEI attacks
David Asbery, founder of the direct-to-consumer platform independent musician platform Pedestal, has been going after capital for about two years. This year, he received $25,000 from Maryland's venture arm TEDCO.
TEDCO initially rejected his funding appeal, but encouraged him to do a program through the organization to polish his pitch. He got to pitch for 10 minutes and got 10 minutes of feedback as well as connections to investors.
'Anytime I get rejected, and there's some type of, 'Hey, we didn't pick you for this, but click here and do this,'' Asbery told Technical.ly. 'I always click here and do whatever they say … because I look at it as following the stream.'
Now he's in talks with additional venture capitalists in Baltimore, but he's found that investors want to participate with fellow funders in a $1 million round — not necessarily write the checks for hundreds of thousands that he's seeking out. The process of finding additional investors is also time-consuming.
Asbery is not looking for a round of that caliber at the moment, but found these investor conversations helpful for making the connections he can leverage when he reaches that point.
That said, he's seen a stark difference in raising money for Pedestal versus Rush Roto, the AI photo editing platform developer he cofounded.
'Depending on the industry that your startup belongs to, that also is a big determining factor in the type of funding and attention you're going to get,' Asbery said.
Rush Roto has collected $500,000, including some funds from an initiative for Black founders backed by Amazon Web Services. He predicts that accelerators and programs for underrepresented founders will continue to dwindle under the Trump administration due to attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programming. He speculated these attacks may explain why venture capital funding dropped this quarter.
'Now we're in a new environment where it's frowned upon,' he said.
Founders: It's time to be capital efficient
Cherry from Conscious Venture Partners believes it'll continue being difficult for startups to raise. He encourages founders to focus on profitability and becoming capital efficient. Those that follow this will grow slowly, but it'll work out in the long run, he said.
Pedestal's founder Asbery is following that rule: He still has money in the bank from the TEDCO investment.
Given the economic turmoil, startups will likely have to raise at lower valuations because of risk in the market, Cherry said. Tariffs will also negatively affect founders — some startups relying on products from abroad may fail, he said.
Despite these difficulties, Cherry wants venture capitalists to write checks. Investors need to double down on investing in innovation and early-stage businesses, because that's where the returns exist.
This quarter marks a downturn for Baltimore, but compared to when Cherry moved to the region in 2013, the ecosystem has grown exponentially.
'I think that we are getting much better as an ecosystem of being connected, but we're still not perfect,' Cherry said, adding: 'I still think that there's work to do in terms of turning this collection of assets we have into a stronger ecosystem. It is light years ahead of where it was.'
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Since modern coronary stents are commonly made of nitinol, the FDA and physicians are already very familiar with its properties. Nitinol stents are crimped down to be tiny enough to deliver into an artery, then, once released, they return to their original size, propping the artery open. The same property makes it possible to insert Vesteck's sutures. The extra layer of stability after the suturing procedure can potentially improve physical outcomes and psychological ones, too, Rafferty said. Without sutures, 'it's kind of like the sword of Damocles hanging over your head, because you think you got cured, but you really didn't,' he said. Progress and setbacks, as funding has become scarce Vesteck isn't available for clinical use yet, but the team has used the Suture-Tight procedure on 14 patients so far in Europe, Canada and Australia. 'Our first human patients are doing very, very well,' Rafferty said. 'The aneurysm sacs are stable or shrinking, and there's no migration, no leaks, no suture fractures.' The procedure is so simple, he said, that one of the first to use the device on a patient, a physician in Australia, successfully stitched four sutures in four minutes. For physicians with endovascular skills, it's a relatively easy procedure with little learning curve. In the US, the Vesteck team has met with the FDA six times and is ready to start the 100-patient clinical trial that would move the technology closer to being used to treat aortic aneurysm patients. Just one thing is holding them back: funding. ' Venture capital funding is way down since COVID,' Rafferty said. 'Part of that is because of the economy. For the last four years, the IPO market has been all but stagnant.' As a result, many medical device companies can't do much more than wait for money to come back into the venture capital market. 'We're kind of on hold,' Rafferty said. On the local level, several Philadelphia investors have been as enthusiastic about Vesteck as Rafferty is about Philadelphia. BioAdvance, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Grays Ferry Capital and Robin Hood Ventures are all supporters. Still, a company like Vesteck needs big-time, global-scale funding to move forward. 'You get to a point where you need to bring in some of these larger investors,' he said, 'and that's what we're trying to do.' Beyond aortic aneurysms Despite the funding roadblocks, Rafferty is optimistic about Vesteck and its potential impact on the medical world. Physicians who have seen the technology have suggested other potential use cases, including as part of heart and vein procedures. 'A big part of our culture is keeping an open mind and understanding that different patient populations around the world have different needs, and [asking] how can we adapt this technology to suit those needs,' Rafferty said. 'That's one of the things we've learned: stay interested and stay humble.'
