Cash Infusion (Debt/Funding)

What it measures

The total value of inbound external capital recorded in the period: actual proceeds from equity issuances, deposits from drawn debt facilities, grant receipts, and other non-operational cash inflows. It deliberately excludes customer revenue, investment or interest income, and proceeds from asset sales — those are earned or converted, not raised.

Why it matters

Cash infusion tells you how much fresh, external capital is keeping the business alive while it burns. For a pre-profit company it is the other side of the runway equation: burn drains the tank, infusion refills it. Investors and boards track it to see how dependent the company is on outside money, how efficiently it can raise, and whether each round is buying real progress against milestones. Read alongside burn, it answers the only question that matters when cash is tight — how long until you need to raise again.

How to read it

Read cash infusion for both magnitude and cadence, never one in isolation. A single $10M round every two years tells a very different story than $5M scraped together every year — the first suggests you hit milestones and raise efficiently, the second suggests you may be burning faster than the market wants to fund. Always cross-reference the infusion against ending cash balance and runway in months: the raise only matters relative to how fast you spend it. A large infusion that extends runway past 18 months is healthy; the same amount that buys only a few months means burn is the real problem, not the raise.

What good looks like

Watch-outs

• Counting committed capital as received. A term sheet or signed commitment is not cash infusion until the wire hits your account. Booking it early overstates runway and tempts you to burn ahead of money you don't yet hold.
• Mixing infusion with revenue or asset sales. Cash from selling a subsidiary or liquidating inventory is asset conversion, not external capital. Only count money raised from investors, lenders, or grant-makers.
• Ignoring timing and conditions. A $5M facility with a 24-month drawdown window is not $5M in hand, and a raise with restrictive covenants, clawbacks, or use-of-funds limits is not unconstrained capital. Record what you've actually drawn and can actually spend.
• Tracking infusion without tracking burn. A company that raises $10M quarterly but burns $15M monthly is insolvent within weeks. Cash infusion is only meaningful next to burn rate and runway — model the three together or the number lies to you.

Worked example