Investments by venture capital firms rose sharply in Massachusetts and the nation last year, returning to the levels achieved before the economic crisis of 2008, according to a report released yesterday by CB Insights, a New York venture capital database.
After a third quarter that the report categorized as “blah,’’ Massachusetts recovered in the last three months of 2011, with a 35 percent increase in venture funding and a 12 percent increase in the number of deals over the previous quarter.
Total venture investment in the state for the year was $3.53 billion, a 32 percent increase over the previous year.
Massachusetts also regained its ranking as the region with the second-highest level of venture investment, after California’s technology-heavy Silicon Valley. New York, which exceeded Massachusetts in both number of deals and total investment in the three months that ended Sept. 30, slipped to third place in the last quarter of 2011.
The state’s fourth-quarter resurgence in venture investment was fueled by a dramatic increase in health care-related funding. More than half of the $959 million invested in the state by venture capital firms in the fourth quarter went to health care companies, the report said.
Nationwide, there were more than 3,051 venture capital investments in 2011 worth a combined total of $30.6 billion, edging past the previous 10-year high, set in 2007. In 2010, total venture investment was $23.7 billion.