The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has sent shockwaves throughout the globe and worsened the financial market slowdown seen in the first quarter of this year. The aftermath of the conflict has affected major economies’ efforts to recover from the pandemic, resulting in a $47 billion total invested in private companies in April 2022 – the lowest in the past 12 months.

Crunchbase data shows that April funding was down 10% month over month from $52 billion in March and 12% from $53.5 billion in April 2021.

CrunchBase analysts have outlined the following trends:

• In April 2022, seed-stage companies raised $3 billion. Seed funding decreased month over month but increased by 14% year over year.

• Early-stage funding hit $14.3 billion, the lowest level in 12 months.

• Late-stage funding, which fluctuates the most, was flat month over month but down 19% year over year.

Some of the areas that gained investors’ attention were AI hardware, Batteries, Quantum computing, AR/VR, and others.

Funds are taking it slow on the late stage and pre-IPO deals , but early-stage investment is still robust and the vibrancy there looks set to sustain for now owing to India-dedicated VC funds that have already raised new funds and global players like Tiger Global choosing to invest in this segment versus their earlier focus on late-stage tech…All eyes are on the LIC IPO and other tech IPOs such as Delhivery to see if the sentiment changes.

Arun Nataraj,founder and MD, Venture Intelligence for TOI

Our list gathers 783 companies, selected in no particular order. Here are the names that peaked our attention.

Namepicks

Anthropic

Anthropic is an Artificial intelligence research company has raised $580 million in funding last month to support its work. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX Trading Ltd, led the Series B round.

The word « anthropic » means involving or concerning the existence of human life, as well as the general effects of humans on their environment. Given the business works on building reliable, steerable AI systems for the future, it seems like a great way to communicate their mission.

Anthropic has secured an exact brand match domain name for their brand – Anthropic.com. Obtaining a short and memorable.com domain name, such as a dictionary term, is a critical first step in the process of building a worldwide brand.

Cavnue

Cavnue brings together technology and road infrastructure to help connected and autonomous cars reach their full potential. The company has recently closed a $130 million Series A funding round from Ford Motor and three other investors.

Cavnue.com is the domain name this startup has chosen to operate on. It perfectly matches their brand name, and the .com extension is what visitors intuitively lean towards when typing a web address.

Convoy

Convoy is an American trucking software company founded in 2015 by Dan Lewis and Grant Goodale. Convoy has raised $1.1 billion in funding throughout 12 rounds. Their most recent funding came from a Debt Financing round on April 21, 2022.

Convoy operates on Convoy.com – an exact brand match .com domain. Investing in a .com domain name that matches their brand name ensures their brand is secure online and makes it easy for their customers, business partners, and investors to reach them.

Grover

Grover is a Berlin-based online subscription platform intended for renting tech products. The company has announced that it raised $330 million in new funding round, reaching $2 billion in funding over 16 rounds.

Grover has invested in the exact brand match Grover.com to gain a maximum of their marketing across channels and avoid security risks. 

Highlights

The majority of the companies on the list, 545 out of 783, have chosen to operate on the .com extension. The majority of Internet users have come to expect a company’s website to be their brand name followed by. com due to the extension’s market dominance (various statistics show that nearly 50% of all websites operate on .com), especially among major corporations.

.ai (used by 36 companies) has been associated with the popular technology term (Artificial Intelligence) and is widely adopted by tech startups along with .io (the preferred choice of 51 companies) – associated with the tech acronym IO – input/output.

30 entries operate on .co – the country domain extension assigned to Colombia. It gained popularity among startups, seen as an acronym for company or corporation. Same as the .ai and .io extensions, country domain codes offer more freedom of choice but come with certain risks.

4 companies use the .health extension, which was introduced in 2017 and quickly became a preferred choice by health-related organizations.

3 companies have secured domains with the .me extension, popular for personalized domains (blogs, resumes, and personal sites), call-to-action domains, and social network activities.

408 operate on exact brand match domains. Get familiar with EBMs with our short guide to teach you the basics about Exact Brand Match domains.

13 companies use a dash in their domains. One of the downsides of using a hyphen in a domain name is that adding it to your domain name makes it harder to reach when typing.

While we make every effort to ensure the data on our site is accurate, complete, and up-to-date, we cannot guarantee its reliability. Our data is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, financial, or other advice. We strongly recommend that you independently verify any information before relying on it.

Other resources

• Top 100 Most Inspiring Brands 2022 by Wunderman Thompson and Their Domain Name Choices
• Preparing for an Uncertain Future: Domain Name Strategies for Business Owners
• Maximising Your Domain Name Strategy: The Benefits of Premium Domain Names for SMEs
• What Domain Extension is Best for a Startup?

How does your brand name match your company vision? What new horizons can a better name open? Get in touch if you feel your brand deserves a better name, we are always happy to help.

2022 april branding business domain domain name domains funding naming startup