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Funds
Cloudflare, an internet technology provider with its own security products, has launched its own $100m fund.
Cybersecurity technology producer Trend Micro has inserted an initial $100m into a newly formed corporate venturing unit that will target disruptive sectors such as the internet-of-things, which its parent company believes will be the next technology mega wave.
Corporates boost Cathay Innovation fund to $320m
Capnamic Ventures, a VC firm that focuses on startups in German speaking regions, has reached the final close of its latest fund, having raised $130m. The fund’s limited partners include Cisco, which announced a $500m German investment drive early last year, as well as AXA Germany, Rheinische Post Media Group and Sparkassen Group.
Applied Ventures joins KVIC for $40m Korea fund
University
Technion institutes $200m fund
Imec expands with $136m fund
Government
BioGeneration begets $75m fund
Horizon approaches $150m fund
Exits
ProSiebenSat.1 sells media-for-equity assets
Online insurance provider ZhongAn has reportedly filed for a $1.5bn IPO in Hong Kong that will allow the company’s co-founders Ping An, Tencent and Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial to exit.
Best Inc, one of several logistics and supply chain services providers to have sprung up in the wake of China’s e-commerce boom, has filed for a $750m IPO in the US.
Takeda subsidiary Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Pfizer have both scored exits in a $75m IPO by Mersana Therapeutics, a developer of antibody drug conjugates that will fight cancer.
Deals
Alibaba paid $1bn for a majority stake in Southeast Asian e-commerce marketplace Lazada last year, and now it’s pumped in another $1bn to take its stake to 83%, giving full exits to backers including Tesco and Rocket Internet, both of which also sold shares in the 2016 deal.
Sources confirmed to Bloomberg over the weekend that Houzz, the Comcast-backed operator of a social image platform for house decoration ideas, has closed a $400m round that valued it at $4bn.
Dynamic glass developer View has doubled its series G round to $200m, $70m of the money coming from BlackRock.
Siemens has joined the participants in electric vehicle charging network ChargePoint’s series G round, which has now closed at $125m.
Naspers reveals $71m Flipkart investment
Brazilian mobile commerce platform Movile has raised $53m in a round that included longtime investor Naspers, which had put up a big part of the $135m the company had raised between 2014 and 2016.
GPU-equipped database developer Kinetica has secured $50m in funding from investors including Citi Ventures, taking its equity financing to $63m in a little over a year.
Government
IDS diagnoses $60m investment
University
Diffblue enters series A spectrum
“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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