Angel Investor Statistics 2026: Deal Sizes, Yield Rates and Outcomes

US angel investors put $18.6 billion into 54,735 startups in 2023, a 16.4% drop in dollars from 2022. Active angel investors rose 14.8% over the same year, to 422,350, according to Jeffrey Sohl’s Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire.

Organized angel groups moved the other way. Angel Capital Association members reported $491.3 million in 2025, up 12% from $437 million a year earlier. The two datasets measure different slices of the same market, and reading them side by side is the only honest way to describe where early-stage money sits. The angel investor statistics below cover deal sizes, equity stakes, yield rates, sector allocation, investor demographics, tax incentives, and the NBER evidence on what angel backing does to a startup’s odds.

Key Takeaways

• US angel investment fell to $18.6 billion in 2023, a decrease of 16.4% over 2022, while the number of active investors rose 14.8%.
• Angel groups reporting to the Angel Capital Association moved the other way, lifting investment 12% to $491.3 million in 2025.
• Minority-owned firms cleared a 32.1% yield rate against a market rate of 24.2%, despite being only 10.3% of the entrepreneurs presenting to angels.
• Hybrid angel organizations concentrate the large checks: 38% of them are over $5 million in investment compared to 8% of the network groups.
• Startups with angel backing are at least 14% more likely to survive for 18 months or more, and angel-backed firms hire 40% more employees.
• Life sciences sectors took nearly 47% of reported angel investment dollars in 2025, up from 31% two years earlier.

Editor’s Choice

• US angel investment: $18.6 billion across 54,735 entrepreneurial ventures in 2023.
• Active angel investors: 422,350 in 2023, compared with 367,945 in 2022.
• ACA-reported angel investment: $491.3 million in 2025, rising from $437 million in 2024.
• Average angel deal size: $339,390, a decrease of 4.8% from 2022.
• Average equity received: 9.7%, at a deal valuation of $3.5 million.
• Market yield rate: 24.2%, which the Center for Venture Research describes as a 1 in 4 chance of securing an angel investment.
• ACA membership: more than 14,000 accredited investors investing individually or through 250+ angel groups, accredited platforms, and family offices.

US Angel Investor Statistics by Year

• Total angel investments in 2023 were $18.6 billion, a decrease of 16.4% over 2022.
• The 2022 total was $22.3 billion, itself a decrease of 23.7% over 2021.
• A total of 54,735 entrepreneurial ventures received angel funding in 2023, a decrease of 12.2% over 2022 investments.
• In 2022, 62,325 ventures received angel funding, down 9.8% from the prior year.
• The deal size for 2023 experienced a slight decrease of 4.8% from 2022, following a 15.4% decrease in deal size the year before.
• The Center for Venture Research puts the response rate for its 2023 survey at 13%.

Source: UNH Center for Venture Research, The Angel Market in 2022 and The Angel Market in 2023

The shape of that table is the point. Dollars and deal counts fell together while the investor base expanded, which describes a market spreading a shrinking pool of capital across more participants rather than one that simply lost interest. Readers tracking the wider private-capital picture will find the later-stage counterpart in our private equity market statistics, where fund-level concentration runs in the opposite direction.

About This Data

Compiled from 11 primary sources: 2 regulator and government sources (the SEC and the New Jersey Economic Development Authority) and 9 industry-association and academic sources (the Angel Capital Association, the UNH Center for Venture Research, three NBER working papers plus the NBER Digest summary, and the UK Business Angels Association). The publication window spans March 2010 to July 2026. Only primary data publishers qualified; no aggregators, market-research resellers, or secondary news outlets were used. Figures are reviewed on a rolling basis and updated when these sources publish new editions.

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Angel Investment by Sector

• Healthcare Services/Medical Devices and Equipment (25.2%) and Software (25.1%) dominated angel investments in 2023.
• FinTech took 12.9% of deals, followed closely by Industrial/Energy-Clean Tech at 12.1%.
• Retail (5.7%) and Biotech (5.1%) rounded out the top 6 sectors.
• Angel Capital Association members reported that Medical Devices, Pharma and Therapeutics, Digital Health, and Medical Diagnostics collectively represented nearly 47% of reported angel investment dollars in 2025.
• Nearly two-thirds of reporting angel groups completed at least one AI-related investment during 2025, favoring applied AI, healthcare AI, and industry-specific solutions over foundational AI technologies.

By the numbers: Two sectors take half of all angel deals. The Center for Venture Research puts Healthcare Services/Medical Devices and Equipment at 25.2% and Software at 25.1% of 2023 deals, with Fin Tech second at 12.9%. The remaining three of the top 6 sectors, Industrial/Energy-Clean Tech, Retail and Biotech, took 12.1%, 5.7% and 5.1% respectively.

Recent Developments

• July 13, 2026: The Angel Capital Association published its 2026 Angel Funders Report, finding that ACA-reported angel investment increased 12% year over year, rising from $437 million in 2024 to $491.3 million in 2025.
• July 2026: the same report found life sciences sectors at nearly 47% of reported angel investment dollars in 2025, up from 37% in 2024 and 31% in 2023.
• July 2026: nearly two-thirds of reporting angel groups completed at least one AI-related investment during the year.
• July 2026: the report flagged that governance participation continues to decline, raising concerns about angels’ ability to maintain board influence and strategic oversight as financing rounds grow larger.
• July 2026: NBER Working Paper 33231, Are Some Angels Better than Others?, was revised, reporting that better-performing angels earn their higher returns through greater access to right-tail outcomes rather than by avoiding losses.
• August 22, 2025: The Angel Capital Association published the Angel Funders Report 2025, describing a market where capital is concentrating at the earliest stages, deal structures are evolving, and sector allocations are shifting, in the words of ACA CEO Pat Gouhin.

Angel Group Investment Reported to the ACA

• ACA-reported angel investment increased 12% year over year, rising from $437 million in 2024 to $491.3 million in 2025.
• The prior reporting cycle ran the other way, with ACA angel investments declining 6% year over year.
• The report found angel groups deployed more capital per investment and per company, which it reads as increased selectivity and conviction among investors.
• Angel groups are writing larger checks while funding fewer companies, and follow-on investments are attracting increasingly larger capital commitments.
• The 2026 report describes the 2025 angel market as showing the first signs of a disciplined recovery following several years of post-pandemic market correction.

The gap between this series and the national one is a coverage gap, not a contradiction. The Center for Venture Research surveys the whole angel population, individual investors included; the Angel Capital Association counts only the organized groups that file data with it. Organized groups can grow their deployment in a year when the broader, unorganized market shrinks, and treating either number as “the” angel market size is the mistake competing pages keep making.

Angel Deal Size, Equity Stake and Valuation

• The average angel deal size in 2023 was $339,390, a decrease of 4.8% from 2022.
• The average equity received was 9.7%, with a deal valuation of $3.5 million, a decrease of 7.9% from 2022.
• That $3.5 million average valuation marked a 7.9% decrease from 2022.
• Angel investments contributed to job growth with the creation of 4.3 jobs per angel investment, an increase from 2022 job creation activity of 3.4 jobs per angel investment.

Source: UNH Center for Venture Research, The Angel Market in 2023

Founders comparing that single-digit equity band against debt should read it next to our small business lending data, where the cost is interest rather than ownership.

Angel Investment Yield Rates

• The yield rate is the percentage of investment opportunities brought to the attention of investors that result in an investment, and in 2023 it was 24.2%.
• The 2022 yield rate was 26.7%.
• Yield rates in the 20%-25% range have historically been indications of a sustainable market over the longer term.
• The yield rate for women entrepreneurs seeking angel capital was 28.8%, higher than the 2023 market yield rate and an increase from the 25.6% women yield rate in 2022.
• The yield rate for minority-owned firms was 32.1%, similar to the 33.1% yield rate in 2022.
• Minority-owned firms represented 10.3% of the entrepreneurs that presented their business concept to angels.

That ordering inverts the usual assumption. The two applicant groups most often described as underfunded convert pitches into checks at higher rates than the market as a whole, which points at a pipeline problem rather than a screening one. The constraint sits upstream, in how few of these founders reach an angel group at all.

Angel Investment by Startup Stage

• Angel investments in the seed and start-up stage were 41% of deals in 2023, and for the fourth consecutive year the seed and start-up stage market was the predominant investment stage for angels.
• Early stage investing accounted for 35% of the deals in 2023.
• A significant shift away from the expansion stage showed up in 2023 at 18% of deals, down from 35% in 2022.
• That marks the fourth consecutive year in which the seed and start-up stage was the predominant investment stage for angels.
• For the third consecutive year in 2022, the seed and start-up stage market was already the predominant investment stage for angels.

How Many Active Angel Investors There Are

• The number of active investors in 2023 increased to 422,350 as compared to 367,945 in 2022, an increase of 14.8%.
• The 2022 figure of 367,945 was itself a modest increase of 1.2% on 363,460 active investors in 2021.
• Separately, the Angel Capital Association counts a membership of more than 14,000 accredited investors.
• The UK Business Angels Association and Beauhurst put the UK angel population at 36,800.

Investor headcount rising through a two-year dollar contraction is the single most useful signal in this dataset. The pattern is familiar across asset classes: participation broadens before capital returns, not after. The same behavior shows up in our retail investing data, where account openings led inflows by several quarters.

Women and Minority Angel Investor Participation

• Women angels represented 46.7% of the angel market in 2023, an increase from 2022 (39.5%) and 2021 (33.6%).
• Women-owned ventures accounted for 46.3% of the entrepreneurs seeking angel capital, a marked increase from 2022 (37.1%) and 2021 (28.6%).
• Minority angels accounted for 5.7% of the angel population.
• Women-owned ventures made up 46.3% of the entrepreneurs seeking angel capital, and their 28.8% yield rate was higher than the overall 2023 market rate.

Key finding: Jeffrey Sohl’s Center for Venture Research analysis asks in its title whether 2023 marked an inflection point for women angels, and the numbers carry it. Women angels represented 33.6% of the market in 2021 and 46.7% in 2023, while women-owned ventures went from 28.6% to 46.3% of the entrepreneurs seeking angel capital.

Life Sciences and AI Concentration in Angel Portfolios

• Medical Devices, Pharma and Therapeutics, Digital Health, and Medical Diagnostics collectively represented nearly 47% of reported angel investment dollars in 2025.
• That share was 37% in 2024 and 31% in 2023.
• The Angel Capital Association names the continued rise of life sciences as the dominant sector for angel investment among the 2026 report’s most significant findings.
• Investors favored applied AI, healthcare AI and industry-specific solutions over foundational AI technologies.

Source: Angel Capital Association Angel Funders Report 2026

Angel Group Structure and Capital Deployment

• Hybrid groups, meaning those that have both direct member investment and investment through funds, hold the greatest concentration of large groups measured by investment levels.
• 38% of the hybrid groups are over $5 million in investment compared to 8% of the network groups and none of the fund-only groups.
• Hybrid angel organizations that combine networks and funds are deploying significantly more capital than traditional models.
• Regional growth showed no pattern at all: the Southwest grew the most, but there were only two groups reporting in that region, while the Mid-Atlantic contracted the most on 4 reporting groups.
• More mature groups had a tighter band of growth outcomes and higher average growth, though the dispersion inside each group remained dramatic.

Source: Angel Capital Association Data Insights, John Harbison, July 2025

Structure, not geography, is the variable that separates the large deployers here. A hybrid vehicle lets a group write a fund cheque alongside member checks into the same round, and that is what carries a group past the $5 million line.

Angel Backing and Startup Survival Outcomes

• Startups that have angel backing are at least 14% more likely to survive for 18 months or more after funding than firms that do not.
• Angel-backed firms hire 40% more employees, and angel backing increases the likelihood of successful exit from the startup phase by 10%, to 17%.
• In countries other than the United States, angel-funded firms are also more likely to attract follow-on financing.
• An earlier regression-discontinuity study found angel funding positively correlated with higher survival, additional fundraising outside the angel group, and faster growth, with improvements typically ranging between 30% and 50%.
• The underlying sample covered 13 angel investment groups in 12 nations, with data on 295 startups funded by these angel groups and 1,287 that they did not fund.
• The average firm in that sample had 10 employees and was seeking to raise $1.2 million, and four in 10 firms were already generating revenue.

Source: NBER Digest March 2016, NBER Working Papers 21808 and 15831

Why it matters: The regression-discontinuity design behind these figures compares applicants just above and below an angel group’s funding cutoff, which strips out the selection effect that makes raw survival comparisons useless. Josh Lerner, Antoinette Schoar, Stanislav Sokolinski and Karen Wilson found the positive impact held independent of how entrepreneur-friendly the country was.

What Drives Angel Investor Returns

• Better-performing angels earn their higher returns through greater access to right-tail outcomes, not by avoiding losses.
• Wealthier and better financially connected angels invest in larger firms, but the returns to nonfinancial capital are substantial.
• Angels with relevant business experience earn higher returns than others in the same firm, especially when they take board seats.
• Social connections to founders and outside investors are also important to angel returns.
• Johan Karlsen, Katja Kisseleva, Aksel Mjøs and David T. Robinson built the finding on Norwegian tax authority data, and describe angel investments as pre-seed and seed funding from largely non-institutional sources.
• The upside those angels are reaching for is measurable: angel backing increases the likelihood of successful exit from the startup phase by 10% to 17%.
• An earlier study of the same question put the correlational improvements in survival, outside fundraising and growth, at typically between 30% and 50%.

Read that finding against the governance trend the Angel Capital Association flagged in 2026, and the two collide. Board seats are where experienced angels convert expertise into return, and declining governance participation removes exactly that lever as rounds grow larger. Readers weighing angel exposure alongside other private allocations will find the wider picture in our alternative investment allocation data.

Accredited Investor Rules That Gate Angel Participation

• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accredits individuals as accredited investors with a net worth over $1 million, excluding primary residence, individually or with a spouse or partner.
• The income route requires income over $200,000 individually or $300,000 with a spouse or partner in each of the prior two years, with a reasonable expectation of the same for the current year.
• Professional criteria cover investment professionals in good standing holding the Series 7, Series 65, or Series 82 licenses.
• Directors, executive officers, and general partners of the company selling the securities also qualify, as do knowledgeable employees of a private fund for investments in that fund.
• Entities owning investments in excess of $5 million qualify as accredited investors.
• Many of the offering exemptions under the federal securities laws limit participation to accredited investors or restrict participation by non-accredited investors.

Source: SEC Accredited Investors guidance, June 2024

That threshold is what separates angel rounds from the retail-accessible path documented in our crowdfunding market data, where non-accredited investors can participate under different exemptions.

State Angel Tax Credits and Policy Incentives

• New Jersey’s Angel Investor Tax Credit Program pays 35% of the qualified investment made in a NJ emerging technology business.
• The credit rises to 40% if the business is certified M/WBE or located in an Opportunity Zone or New Markets Tax Credit Census Tract.
• Eligibility requires the emerging technology business to employ fewer than 150 employees, at least 75% of whom work in New Jersey.
• Starting in calendar year 2021, up to $35 million of Angel Investor Tax Credit may be approved per calendar year.
• Applicants have six months from the date of investment to submit an application to the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, with no exceptions.
• All applicants, including out-of-state and overseas investors, must file a New Jersey tax return for the tax year for which their application is approved.

Angel Investing Outside the United States

• Of a total of 36,800 angels in the UK, only 14% (5,064) are women, and less than 0.5% (157) of female angels have achieved a portfolio of 10 or more.
• Female angels have been involved in deals worth £2.34 billion over the past decade, backing over 4,000 businesses, including over 1,000 female-founded businesses, and helping to create more than 10,000 jobs.
• Almost 25% of all companies backed by female angels were female-founded, higher than the average of 19%.
• Women angels in the UK show a strong appetite for technology innovation, with FinTech, AI, AdTech, EdTech and eHealth the most popular sectors for investment.
• Investments by angels and angel groups grew faster outside the United States between 2009 and 2014, nearly doubling in Europe and tripling in Canada from a much lower level.

Source: UNH Center for Venture Research, UK Business Angels Association and Beauhurst

The transatlantic gap in women’s participation is a 32-point spread on the same measure, and it is the kind of divergence that makes single-market angel statistics misleading when quoted globally. Exit conditions differ just as sharply, which our IPO market statistics track in more detail.

What Is the Success Rate of Angel Investors?

Angel success is measured on two different clocks, and both have numbers attached. On the deal-selection clock, the 2023 yield rate was 24.2%, which the Center for Venture Research describes as a 1 in 4 chance of an entrepreneur securing an angel investment, and yield rates in the 20%-25% range have historically indicated a sustainable market over the longer term.

On the returns clock, the distribution matters more than the average. Better-performing angels earn their higher returns through greater access to right-tail outcomes, not by avoiding losses, which means a portfolio’s result is decided by its few largest winners rather than by how many investments break even. Angels with relevant business experience earn higher returns than others in the same firm, especially when they take board seats.

What Percentage of Equity Does an Angel Investor Get?

Angel rounds take a single-digit stake on average. The average equity received in 2023 was 9.7%, at a deal valuation of $3.5 million, against an average deal size of $339,390. That valuation was a decrease of 7.9% from 2022.

The stake moves with the valuation rather than with a fixed convention, so a founder raising the same dollar amount at a lower valuation gives up more of the company. Angel groups reporting to the Angel Capital Association have been deploying more capital per investment and per company, which pushes the same arithmetic in the other direction at the group end of the market.

Are Angel Investors Typically Wealthy?

Angel investing is gated by wealth tests written into US securities law. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accredits individuals with a net worth over $1 million excluding primary residence, or income over $200,000 individually or $300,000 with a spouse or partner in each of the prior two years. Many offerings exempt under the federal securities laws limit participation to accredited investors.

Wealth is not the only route, and it is not the only thing that predicts performance. Investment professionals holding the Series 7, Series 65, or Series 82 licenses qualify on professional criteria rather than on assets, and research on angel returns finds that while wealthier and better financially connected angels invest in larger firms, the returns to nonfinancial capital are substantial. Readers comparing these thresholds against household wealth distribution will find the context in our wealth distribution data.

Conclusion

The US angel market contracted in dollars while it expanded in people. Total angel investment landed at $18.6 billion in 2023 across 54,735 ventures, down 16.4% on the year, even as active investors rose 14.8% to 422,350, and the organized-group slice the Angel Capital Association measures turned back up in 2025, gaining 12% to $491.3 million. Deal economics tell the same story of discipline: a $339,390 average cheque for 9.7% of a company valued at $3.5 million.

What the two datasets agree on is that selection tightened while participation widened, and the evidence base for what that buys a founder is unusually strong for an asset class this informal. Angel-backed startups remain at least 14% more likely to survive 18 months or more and hire 40% more employees, which is the number that matters to entrepreneurs deciding whether an angel round is worth the equity it costs.