Funding for companies around the world decreased in 2022, but there were still many startup industries that captured investors’ attention — and dollars.
Companies received $1.2 trillion in funding globally last year, down from $1.3 trillion in 2021, according to York IE Fuel. We’ve used Fuel’s data to compile the below lists of the largest and fastest-growing startup industries in technology and science sectors.
Defining Startup Markets
Most market research and data platforms rely on crowdsourcing or manual categorization to place companies in markets. This approach gets outdated fast — if it was ever accurate at all. Fuel, on the other hand, uses natural language processing to learn how a company positions itself and automatically classifies that company into its relevant markets.
In Fuel, you can view more than 700 markets, from A/B testing to wireless, to see who the major players are, what the big news is and which companies are getting funded.
Top 10 Startup Industries by Funding
These are the largest markets based on the amount of funding raised:
- Biotechnology: $91.8 billion
- Energy: $91.6 billion
- Life science: $89.7 billion
- Renewable energy: $89.7 billion
- Biopharma: $86.8 billion
- Energy management: $79.4 billion
- Neuroscience: $67.6 billion
- Pharmaceutical: $66.6 billion
- Oil and gas: $65.2 billion
- Energy efficiency: $58.4 billion
Startup Industry Research
Top 10 Startup Industries by Rounds
These are the most active markets based on the number of funding rounds:
- Biotechnology: 1,651
- Life science: 1,350
- Neuroscience: 1,291
- Biopharma: 1,261
- Genetics: 1,023
- FinTech: 1,018
- Medical device: 934
- mHealth: 858
- Health care: 774
- Mobile payments: 767
Fastest-Growing Startup Industries by Funding
These startup markets had the biggest funding increases in 2022:
| Market | 2022 Funding | Increase |
| 1. Digital marketing | $1.2 billion | 2,930% |
| 2. Mechanical design | $5.9 billion | 948% |
| 3. CMS | $8.3 billion | 936% |
| 4. Project management | $2.6 billion | 549% |
| 5. Wind energy | $18.4 billion | 469% |
| 6. Blogging platforms | $9.6 billion | 367% |
| 7. Graphic design | $79 million | 333% |
| 8. Reservations | $9.2 billion | 328% |
| 9. Web hosting | $8.2 billion | 309% |
| 10. Social media marketing | $1.2 billion | 299% |
Methodology
The above lists include all funding reported by companies in science- and technology-related markets worldwide from Jan. 1-Dec. 31, 2022.
York IE Fuel may categorize companies into multiple markets; therefore, the sum of all markets’ funding amounts and funding rounds will exceed the actual totals.
