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Funds
Invenergy announced (just ahead of Trump’s Paris deal pullout) that it will launch a corporate venturing arm aimed at cleantech software companies.
Chinese internet company 37 Interactive Entertainment has launched an investment fund together with VC firm Oriental Future Capital.
Google is reportedly launching an AI-focused fund that will be led by engineers rather than professional investors.
Salesforce breaks ground on $50m Trailblazer fund
GGV
HTGF III celebrates $275m first close
Vertex to launch Israel and US funds
People
Smith stays on top of Allied Minds
Exits
VNG, the Vietnam-based online gaming and messaging firm, has inked a preliminary agreement with stock exchange Nasdaq to undertake an initial public offering in the US.
HP calculates Hexadite exit
ItzCash is acquired by Ebix
Deals
E-commerce firm Alibaba and its financial services affiliate Ant Financial are set to lead a $1bn round for China-based online food ordering and delivery platform Ele.me.
It could have been one of the biggest deals of the year, but it wasn’t meant to be despite the impressive deal-making skills of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son: the merger of satellite company OneWeb – backed by the aforementioned corporate – has given up on a $14bn merger with Intelsat, a Nasdaq-listed peer that is also among OneWeb’s backers.
Outcome Health, which has developed products such as the Digital Anatomy Board that enables doctors to annotate 3D anatomical diagram to visualise a patient’s condition and treatment options, has achieved a $5bn pre-money valuation for its latest round that involved Alphabet’s CapitalG unit and reportedly brought in as much as $600m.
Andy Rubin may be best known in tech circles as the father of the Android operating system (which he sold to Google in 2005), but now he’s trying to create an entire consumer brand called Essential – starting, perhaps unsurprisingly, with a smartphone. To do that, he’s raised “hundreds of millions of dollars” from investors such as Foxconn, Tencent and Access Industries.
Ouyeel manufactures $140m investment
In China, education platform provider Yuanfudao has collected $120m from investors including Tencent, which previously supplied $40m in May 2016.
UrWork and 5Lmeet collect $117m
Zongheng remains in Perfect World for funding
Casper, the company that is known for delivering its memory foam mattresses folded up in boxes, was in discussions with retailer Target for a while over a possible acquisition – at one point, Target was even willing to put as much $1bn on the table. The transaction however didn’t materialise because the two couldn’t agree on the terms, but that doesn’t appear to have stopped Target from leading a $75m investment in Casper.
Adobe Systems may not be among the most prolific corporate venturers out there (the company was involved in a handful of deals over the past year), but it does support its portfolio companies through follow-on rounds, as illustrated by Demandbase’s $65m funding round.
Bicycle Therapeutics rides towards $52m series B
Snapdeal grabs $17.5m
Back in the US, industrial robots maker Grabit hasn’t announced any new funding but revealed it has collected $25m in capital to date.
Uni
Investors chip in for Ultrasoc’s series D
Tolerogenixx accepts seed round
Gov
Wise is clever about series B
Japan-based technology conglomerate SoftBank Group has made a first close at $93bn of its corporate venturing fund after commitments from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and at least four other corporations.
“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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