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Medtech companies lift Miami area VC to $1.15B in Q1, PitchBook reports. Here were the top deals.

Nancy Dahlberg
Nancy Dahlberg
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Helped by three mega-rounds by healthcare technology companies, startups in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area drew $1.15 billion in venture capital in Q1, according to PitchBook’s Q1 findings released today.

More broadly, nationally venture capital hit a record high – $267.2 billion – yet almost three-quarters of it came from five AI deals. “Q1 marked a new extreme,” said Nizar Tarhuni, PitchBook’s Executive Vice President of Research & Market Intelligence. “These are not the signals of a broad recovery – they’re the signals of a market where a shrinking group of players is setting the terms, and where record headlines are obscuring how little has changed for the rest of venture. … Founders and fund managers outside that top tier are navigating a market that looks very different than the numbers suggest.”

Still, thanks to a solid performance In Q1, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area retained its position as a top 10 US VC hub for deal count, coming in at No. 7, just behind Austin, and ahead of Denver, Washington and Seattle, and No. 8 for deal dollars, according to the Q1 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report out today.

Let’s take a deeper look at local, state and national trends and top deals.

The South Florida picture

For Q1 2025, PitchBook reported that the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area pulled in $1.15 billion across 98 deals, according to PitchBook’s data that was used in the Venture Monitor. That’s up from a revised $801 million across 106 deals in Q4. The average deal size in Q1 was $11.7 million.

Q4 top deals: According to PitchBook’s data, here were the top nine Q1 rounds by companies headquartered in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area in Q1. (Note: One large deal was removed after Pitchbook’s early press materials were sent out and is not included here.)

  • OpenEvidence, the ChatGPT for clinicians, announced a $250 million Series D in January, valuing the company at $12 billion.  The funding follows a $225 million round valued at $6 billion. OpenEvidence relocated to Miami from Cambridge, Mass., in July, 2025.
  • eMed, a Miami-based digital health company that manages GLP-1 weight-loss programs for employers, raised $200 million in Series A funding at a valuation of over $2 billion. The company also said NFL legend Tom Brady was joining as Chief Wellness Officer and lead investor.
  • ILiAD Biotechnologies, an advanced clinical stage biotechnology company based in Weston that is focused on whooping cough, secured a Series B round of $115 million.
  • Ubicquia, the Fort Lauderdale-based company that  embeds intelligence into legacy assets such as streetlights, transformers, and utility poles, raised a $106 million Series D.
  • SynthBee, the Fort Lauderdale-based startup founded by Rony Abovitz that  is building safe, reliable and scalable computing intelligence for businesses, announced in February the completion of $100 million in funding.
  • Hydra Host, the Miami-based startup aiming to turn overlooked data centers into AI powerhouses, raised $75 million.
  • Praetorian Global, based in Coral Gables, is a leading brand owner and intellectual property provider to the global cannabis and hemp industry, and raised $49.6 million.
  • Deal.ai, a Miami based all-in-one AI platform for businesses, raised $30 million seed round.
  • FirmPilot, a Miami-based platform that uses AI and proprietary legal marketing data to help firms attract higher-value cases while tracking return on investment more clearly, raised a $22 million Series A-1 round.

To be sure, venture capital data lags; PitchBook and other sources revise their data constantly because new reporting comes in, rounds get reopened, startups relocate, etc.

On the exit front, there were 4 exits for South Florida companies in Q4. The largest was Ostro, a Miami-based healthtech company, with an exit value of $100 million disclosed, according to Pitchbook.

The Florida picture

Statewide, according to data underlying Pitchbook’s new report, Florida companies drew $1.79 billion across 161 deals in Q1 2026, up solidly from a revised $1.1 billion across 177 deals in Q4.

Just like for the Miami metro, the state is on track for another strong year, potentially besting the region’s 2025 VC results. South Florida continues to drive in most of the state’s venture activity, representing 65% of deal value and 61% of the deal count in Q1. Stay tuned for my upcoming eMerge Insights mid-year report on statewide trends.

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According to PitchBook’s data, the top deal around the state  outside of South Florida in Q1 was TENEX of Sarasota, an AI-native cybersecurity company transforming security operations that raised $250 million megaround. The company located its world headquarters in Sarasota last year.  

Another top deal in the state was Spiro Medical, a medical device maker in the Tampa Bay area that raised $67 million in Q1.

As for Florida’s other metro areas in Q1, the Orlando metro area attracted $152.4  million across 43 deals, way up from a revised $72.4 million across 16 deals in Q4. The Tampa-St. Petersburg metro area attracted $123.4 million across 15 deals in Q1, up in dollar value from a revised $111.6 million across 14 deals in Q4, according to PitchBook’s data. Five companies in the Sarasota area, which Pitchbook lists separately from Tampa Bay, attracted $292 million, including the TENEX raise. The Space Coast logged $37.2 million in two deals.

In Q1 across the state, there were 5 exits valued at $1.4 billion.

The national picture

U.S. venture capital activity in Q1 2026 reached unprecedented levels, but the headline figures mask a highly concentrated market, says Pitchbook’s Kyle Stanford, Director of US Venture Research. Total deal value hit a record $267.2 billion, more than doubling the previous quarterly high. However, roughly 73% of this value came from just five deals, most notably massive financings for OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Waymo, and Databricks. Excluding these outliers, underlying investment totaled $72.2 billion across an estimated 4,594 deals, indicating steady but not extraordinary activity.

“AI continues to be the focal point of VC, and the continued growth is more of a signal that AI is no longer a nice to have for companies, but a necessity to receive interest from tech investors,” Stanford said in PitchBook’s First Look report, adding that 88.8% of deal value went to AI companies during the quarter. “Those companies span the breadth of sectors and verticals, from healthcare and life sciences, to enterprise tech and consumer products,” he said.

Of course, Silicon Valley, including San Francisco, attracted the lion’s share of Q1 activity, an eye-popping $220.8 billion across 658 deals.

Exit activity also surged, with $347.3 billion in total value, the highest on record. Yet this figure was largely driven by a single transaction: SpaceX’s $250 billion acquisition of xAI, representing 72% of all exit value. Even without it, exit value reached a strong $97.3 billion, the best since late 2021. AI-related M&A remained a key driver, with several large acquisitions highlighting continued strategic demand. Meanwhile, the IPO market showed modest improvement, with 15 listings in the quarter, but remains constrained. Potential mega-IPOs, such as from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, could unlock liquidity, though they also risk crowding out smaller offerings.

Fundraising showed signs of recovery, reaching $47.8 billion, but remained concentrated among large, established managers. A single $9 billion fund accounted for nearly one-fifth of commitments, underscoring ongoing disparities. Limited partners continue to favor experienced firms amid macro uncertainty, making differentiation and proven expertise essential for newer emerging managers seeking capital.

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Nancy Dahlberg
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