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San Francisco -- IN THE VENTURE-CAPITAL world these days, big is in.

Venture capitalists -- who typically invest in small, private companies with the hope of a big payout later -- are putting bigger chunks of cash into larger, more-established companies and easing up on earlier-stage investments, industry data show. The jumbo investments underscore how anxious some venture capitalists are to put their excess, mostly boom-era cash to work, investors say.

And many larger venture-backed companies, weary of testing the cooled-off market for new-stock issues, are happy to take the money. One example: Wireless-data company Visto Corp., which has been around since 1996, will today announce it has raised $70 million from venture firms led by new investor DFJ ePlanet Ventures. Other investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson; Oak Investment Partners; Meritech Capital Partners; VantagePoint; and Allegis Capital, all of which already have a stake in Visto.

Visto, of Redwood Shores, Calif., has already raised a total of $229 million in venture funds over nine years, though much of that was used to support a remote-personal-computer-access business that the company has since abandoned. The latest round of financing used the same valuation as the most recent round in 2003.

Visto hopes to go public during the next 12 to 18 months, but isn't in a big hurry. "You don't want to be one of those, 'I've-fallen-and- I-can't-get-up' companies," says Visto's chairman, president and chief executive, Brian A. Bogosian. So the company, which sells software that enables email to be sent to cellphones, will use its new venture cash to keep growing and move toward profitability. It hopes to break even by the time it goes public.

Overall, the portion of money invested in bigger, later-stage companies like Visto rose to account for half of all venture financings in the third quarter of this year, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association, an Arlington, Va., trade group. That's up from 33% in the year-earlier period and 15.5% five years ago. Meanwhile, the percentage of venture money invested in seed- and early-stage companies fell: Such funds accounted for just under 19% of all venture investments in the third quarter, down from 22.4% in the year-earlier period and 27.4% at the end of 2000.

The average investment in a later-stage company, which a trade group defines as one with a widely available product that is generating continuing revenue, was about $10.6 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30, up from the $10.1 million average investment a year ago. Start-up and "seed" stage companies drew an average of just under $2 million, while slightly more developed "early-stage" firms took in an average $5.4 million each, according to the venture trade group's data.

Such trends are a sign that many venture-funded companies, particularly those in industries like wireless and pharmaceuticals, still need significant cash to ramp up operations. But it also indicates a problem for venture firms: Their funds, which raised tens of billions of dollars during the dot-com boom and never spent it all, are now scrambling to find places to put their remaining cash before the fund's life, usually 10 years, runs out.

As a result, venture capitalists are opting for bigger investments in more mature companies, since those firms might go public or get bought more quickly than newer firms. The goal of any venture-capital investment is an "exit," usually in the form of an IPO or an acquisition.

There is "real pressure at the large funds to get the rest of [this] capital put to work," says Michael Greeley, a partner at IDG Ventures in Boston. Many venture-capital firms try to invest their money in the first five years of a fund's life, Mr. Greeley notes. That means firms that raised $1 billion funds during the height of the tech-stock frenzy in 2000 are now in crunch mode to get that cash invested.

John Fisher, a Draper Fisher Jurvetson managing director, says while many venture firms may "feel pressure to 'use it or lose it' " in terms of excess cash, his firm doesn't. "We invest only when we can achieve superior returns on investment," says Mr. Fisher, whose firm put $16 million into Visto's latest round. Draper Fisher's ePlanet joint venture invested roughly the same amount, according to a Visto spokeswoman.

Mr. Fisher says Visto's business -- which competes with Research in Motion Ltd., maker of BlackBerry email devices -- requires a lot of cash. Visto sells its software to phone carriers like Britain's Vodafone Group PLC, though its list of phone-company partners isn't as long as that of competitor Seven Networks Inc. Seven, based in Redwood City, Calif., has raised $94 million in venture funding. Visto sued Seven and another competitor two years ago over alleged patent infringement, and Visto intends to use some of its venture cash for legal fights.

The surge in investments in later-stage companies also reflects a rough IPO environment where investors demand stronger financial results before they will invest in an IPO. Thus "many of the later- stage funds are providing the same type of capital base that the public markets would have provided years ago," says Yogen K. Dalal, of the Mayfield venture-capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif.