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Investments
Sirin Labs, developer of a smartphone that will combine military-grade security with the features of a consumer device, secured $72m in a seed round.
Entertainment ticketing platform Weiying joined an ever-growing list of startups capable of attracting huge stacks of money. The company raised $693m in a series C+ round.
Alibaba’s financial services spinout Ant Financial closed a monster $4.5bn series B round.
On Global University Venturing, the most money was collected by Nexthink, a spinout of Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne that has raised $40m.
Funds
Outdoor advertising company Focus Media has injected $200m in a $400m in a fund aimed at sports startups taking on the Chinese market. The fund will be co-run with FountainVest Partners.
Smartphone brand HTC meanwhile put $100m into an accelerator and fund that it has dubbed Vive X after its virtual reality headset.
Italy-based Intesa Sanpaolo has created unit named Neva Finventures. Neva has received an initial $34m in funding though should increase to $113m in future.
On Global Government Venturing, Germany and EIF have officially launched their $255m Coparion fund that was first announced in March. The focus of the fund is technology-driven companies that have been around for less than a decade.
IPOs
Gene editing technology developer Intellia Therapeutics is getting ready to go public. The life sciences business has set the terms for its IPO that could bring in $90m, while Novartis and Regeneron will inject $55m investment in a concurrent private placement.
Exits
Fidelity is set to exit Stemcentrx, which is working on treatments for cancer stem cells, when the company is acquired by AbbVie.
People
Issam Dairanieh joined BP 18 years ago and has been an active corporate venturer for 11, working his way to the very top of BP Ventures. And now he’s looking for new challenges, announcing that he’ll leave the energy company to lead a firm that offers capital to technologies that cut carbon emissions and to create a sustainability-focused infrastructure funds.
“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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