The venture funding spigot, which gushed like a fire hose in 2021 and early 2022, is all but drip-drip-drip now. By the end of the first quarter of 2023, the fundraising momentum that began in 2021 had largely evaporated, with $11.7 billion closed across 99 funds in the U.S. — on track for the worst performance since the fourth quarter of 2017, according to a PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report issued late Wednesday. Late-stage deal value declined for a seventh straight quarter. In 2021, $158.5 billion was raised across 1,336 deals.