When locally based medical device company Procyrion announced a $16 million venture-capital deal in January, it marked a milestone not just for the startup but for Houston as well.
Venture-capital funding in Houston largely went to health-care companies in the first quarter of 2018, with the Procyrion deal ranked as the second-largest investment, a new report by the PricewaterhouseCooper and CB Insights firms shows.
Houston companies claimed a total of $47.8 million in venture funds in the first quarter, a 47 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. There were a nine local deals in each of those two quarters.
The results are in line with national trends where the dollar amount of deals has grown across the U.S. even if the number of deals themselves has declined.
Procyrion president and CEO Benjamin Hertzog said he was surprised to learn health-care companies led the way in terms of top deals for Houston in 2018...