Miami Fintech Startups Are Magnets for VC Funding

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro has pulled $361M in venture capital funding for Q2 2024, a considerable drop from the $623M the area attracted in the first quarter, according to Pitchbook’s latest data.

The second quarter deal count for South Florida startups also dropped to 71 from the Q1 tally of 106. This compares with 89 deals encompassing $378M in Q2 2023, Refresh Miami reported.

However, the report noted that two late-breaking deals in June were not included in the total: Insightec, a medtech firm based in Miami and Israel developing focused ultrasound, raised $150M, Miami’s largest raise of the year; asset-tokenization startup Securitize had a $47M round.

When those two deals are folded into South Florida’s VC total for the second quarter, the Q2 results come close to matching the tally for Q1 2024. With VC haul for the first half of 2024 approaching $1B, the region appears to be on track to match last year’s total of $2.4B, according to Pitchbook data.

Last year’s total in South Florida represented a steep drop from the region’s record-breaking VC haul of $5.8B in 2022 when the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area ranked 7th in the nation and defied a national downturn in venture capital investments.

The good news in Pitchbook’s latest report involves Miami’s burgeoning fintech sector, which continues to flex its fund-raising muscles. Of the five VC deals,  four in the region involved Miami-based companies, three of which were fintech players.

FundKite, an online funding platform for small businesses that relocated from NY to Miami, raised $25.9M; Payabli, a Miami-based fintech startup that helps SaaS companies get paid, raised $20M in a Series A round; Miami-based Majority, which offers an immigrant-focused banking platform, raised $20M in Q2.

According to a Crunchbase report at the end of last year, there are now more than 570 fintech startups headquartered in Florida. Many of them are located in the Miami area, which rapidly is becoming an international finance hub.

Cleantech and climate tech also are growth sectors in South Florida.  Exowatt, a Miami-based cleantech startup, raised a $20M seed round in the second quarter from investors including Atomic and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Other startups in the region that secured significant funding rounds in the second quarter included Healing Realty Trust, a Boca Raton-based business productivity firm that raised a $20M Series A round; Max Retail, a West Palm Beach firm with a marketplace for excess inventory, fetched $15M; Felix Pago, a fintech remittance platform, scored $15.5M; Dataplor, a global location intelligence startup, raised $10.6M.