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03 October 2016 – Funding news from Canada, the EU and the UK, Exits for Nokia and Much More

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People

Jack Leeney, US head of investing for Telefonica Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the eponymous Spain-based phone operator, has left after nearly five years at the firm in order to be a partner at SP Global Capital.

Microsoft Ventures has hired Leo de Luna, previously a principal at venture capital firm Split Rock Partners, as managing director to cover California’s Bay area and New York; Rashmi Gopinath, previously an investment director at Intel Capital, as an investing partner covering enterprise software investments in the Bay area; Lisa Nelson, previously chief of staff to the head of business development and the chief financial officer at Microsoft, as a partner; and Priya Saiprasad, previously part of financial services startup Square’s corporate development team, as a principal.

Mérieux Développement has appointed Jean-François Billet, Daniel Fero and Benoit Pierret as it expands its investment capabilities in Europe and the US.

Funds

Canada could start a second funds of venture capital funds (FoF) support programme in its next federal budget allied to support for corporate venturing.

The government-backed European Investment Fund (EIF) has set up a collaboration with national promotional institutions (NPIs) or banks (NPBs) across European Union (EU) member states, with one of its first initiatives expected to be a venture capital coinvestment programme with the Netherlands, according to an attendee.

Baidu, the internet company has added another fund, the $60m Easterly Ventures, to its arsenal. This latest vehicle will focus on Brazil-based technology startups.

Line, the messaging app spun out of Naver, has joined forces with its parent company to put $112m in a fund being raised by Korelya Capital – both companies providing $62m.

ServiceNow has set up an investment division dubbed ServiceNow Ventures and launched a competition to award a total of $500,000 to startups.

Havas, the France-based advertising and PR firm, will provide capital and consulting to Australian startups.

Wayra joins UK government for cybersecurity accelerator
The Telefónica subsidiary will establish the accelerator initiative

Daimler’s Startup Autobahn accelerator reaches Singapore
The scheme, initiated in Stuttgart last year, will be replicated in Singapore in partnership with NUS

Nationwide Children’s Hospital partners Rev1 for $5.5m fund
The healthcare system has joined venture capital firm Rev1 Ventures for a unit that will invest in life sciences

Exits

One of the companies that was expected to list back in January after filing for a $200m IPO at the backend of last year was Nutanix, an enterprise cloud company backed by Sapphire Ventures, the VC firm spun out of SAP. Market conditions turned out to be less than favourable then, but the company has now finally moved ahead valuing the company at $4bn.

Nokia exits Gridsum in $87m IPO

Nokia gets out of Intermedia in MDP acquisition

One97 comes to the rescue as EduKart crashes

SoundCloud, a music streaming service popular with independent artists, is reportedly in acquisition talks again. This time it’s not Twitter, which discussed such plans in 2014 but withdrew that same year before injecting $70m in series E capital a few months ago, but Spotify.

Investments

Another maybe deal but Wal-Mart enters talks to drive $1bn Flipkart investment

FIH Mobile subsidiary has contributed $125m to Tink’s funding round, a company that partners hotels and puts smartphones in rooms that are free to use for guests.

Didi Chuxing enters Ofo’s funding cycle

Online sales technology developer Apttus, backed by Salesforce Ventures, has welcomed back sovereign wealth fund Kuwait Investment Authority for an $88m series D round that put the company’s total equity at $274m.

Bloomberg helps ship $65m to Flexport

Xiaochuan Chuhai does its series B homework

Merck Ventures takes a ride on iOMX

Line seasons $45m Snow investment

Shape Security fits $40m into series D

Instacart consumes Whole Foods funding

NS1 directs $20m to series B

Eli Lilly breaches Fortis in $18m series A

University Corner

GE and Allied Minds study collaboration

Government Department

Druva drives $51m series E

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

18 July 2016 – The Power Behind Pokémon Go raises $181m plus more

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Investments

Unity, which is the game engine that helped build Pokémon Go, raised $181m in its series C round led by DFJ Growth and including China Investment Corporation – the sovereign wealth fund of the People’s Republic.

A $45m investment for iCarbonX whose shareholders include internet company Tencent, which led a $154m series A round in April 2015.

Naspers led a $30m series C round for online coding school CodeAcademy.

Sapience Therapeutics, a spinout of Columbia University, welcomed Celgene to a $22.5m series A round led by VC firm Eshelmann Ventures.

Funds

IDG Capital Partners, a VC affiliate of media company International Data Group, which closed its latest fund at $1bn.

Mavcap, the Malaysian government-owned venture firm, is looking to raise $250m for three technology funds and is hoping to attract the interest of both domestic and overseas corporates.

Verdane Capital IX, backed by private and public pension funds, university endowments, private foundations, insurance companies and family offices, hit its hard cap of $349m and will put that money into SMEs in Northern Europe.

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, which is reaching full deployment of its current fund Infuse Ventures, backed by International Finance Corporation, BP, the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and its Technology Development Board. To make sure it’ll still have resources available to invest, the institute is now preparing the launch of a $150m vehicle, dubbed Bharat Innovations Fund, which will focus on the areas of healthcare, agriculture and energy.

Exits

Line’s $1.14bn IPO.

Yatra, an India-based online travel booking platform that went public through a reverse merger with US-listed shell company Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corporation in a deal that values it at just $208m.

ZTO Express, a logistics service based in China, is aiming for a US flotation this autumn that could bring in between $1bn and $2bn.

Talend, backed by France’s public investment bank BPIfrance, setting the range for its IPO at $15 to $17 per American Depositary Share.

People

Catherine Dupéré, previously of BDC Capital, joining Isomer Capital.

Richard Holliday meanwhile has joined Oxford spinout Bodle Technologies.

University Ventures with its announcement that it would be hiring Troy Williams and Prateek Aneja while promoting Aanand Radia. Williams will join Radia as MD, joining from publishing house Macmillan Publishers. Aneja will take on the role of vice-president, joining from Wells Fargo Securities.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

04 July 2016 – Crispr investment, Siemens fund and more Intel Capital people moves plus more

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News and Deals

Corporate

On GlobalCorporateVenturing.com, the week’s biggest news was the downfall of Zenefits, a US-based HR software provider that closed a $500m series C round backed by Comcast in May 2015. Not only has the company struggled to deliver on the predicted revenue, but it’s also run into serious regulatory issues.

Zenefits might not be in quite as bad a shape as Theranos, the biotech company whose technology was uncovered to be scientifically unworkable by Wall Street Journal several weeks ago, but I doubt that is of much comfort to any of the investors or the management.

Crispr Technologies has extended its series B round to $140m following a $38m investment.

Thrive Market, an organic produce subscription service, secured $110m in capital to boost its marketing efforts and expand the own-brand product range.

Government

Modern Meadow’s $40m series B round could be a game-changer for a very big industry: the company, now backed by Singaporean government investment firm Temasek, is creating leather in the lab using the building blocks of skin.

University

Allecra Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company has attracted $24m in a series B round featuring EMBL Ventures, the investment vehicle of research institute European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

Funds

Corporate and Government

Partech Ventures has closed its growth-stage fund at $440m with limited partners including BPIfrance, the public investment bank of France, as well as Renault, Carrefour, Ingenico, AG2R La Mondiale and CNP Assurances.

Siemens, which already operates a corporate venturing subsidiary and has popped up on our radar regularly, now has launched another unit, named Next47

University

Tsinghua Holdings, an investment firm solely backed by Tsinghua University, has revealed that it plans on providing $7.6bn to research efforts over the next five years.

Exits

Line, the Naver-owned messaging service, has set its IPO range between $26.50 and $31.50 and could potentially raise $1.1bn at a $6.6bn valuation.

Syros Pharmaceuticals floated below its range and brought in $50m.

Sungevity, which has attracted more than $210m in funding in about a decade, and is now merging with listed special purpose vehicle Easterly Acquisition Corporation. The deal gives an exit to GE, Lowe’s and Solon.

People

Intel Capital is still seeing a lot of change following Wendell Brooks taking over leadership. Ameet Bhansali, Anthony Lin, Trina Van Pelt and Bob Nunn have all been promoted to managing director positions, and are joined by Marcin Hejka, Ken Elefant and Ramamurthy Sivakumar who will also take crucial roles.

Comcast Ventures has lost Gavin Teo to B Capital, the VC affiliate of Boston Consulting Group. Teo had joined Comcast Ventures in 2012.

NTT Docomo Ventures has brought on board Takayuki Inagawa as a replacement for Nobuyuki Akimoto. Inagawa took over as head of the unit on Friday.

Paul Harvey, head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Europe, Middle East and Africa technology investment banking unit, has moved on to Octo Telematics to establish a corporate venturing division. Harvey will serve as executive chairman.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

13 June 2016 – Cisco shakeup, Line flotation, Oxford ISIS rebranding and more.

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Cisco is in the news for not so positive reasons following the walkout of its spin-in team.

Exits

Line, the messaging platform, wholly-owned by Naver, is aiming for $1bn in proceeds at a valuation of $5.5bn

Thailand-based back-office services provider Netbay is aiming for a $4.5m flotation on the domestic stock exchange.

Singapore Press Holdings is also due to celebrate an exit, with its portfolio company Smaato, a mobile advertising company, close to being acquired by Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communication for $148m.

Monster recruits Jobr.

Investments

Rylance is a company is using artificial intelligence to predict even never-before-seen attacks, stop intrusions before disaster strikes and learn from previous threats – and with a first close at $100m for its series D round, it’s well equipped to bring its software to even more clients.

Tradeshift operates an invoicing platform for companies to get paid by their suppliers and has today increased its total capital by $75m.

SundaySky, a marketing company with software that produces personalised video campaigns with real-time info such as product pricing, closed a $30m series D round.

Weka.io meanwhile welcomed Qualcomm Ventures to a series B round that increased the startup’s total funding to $32m.

A $30m series C round for Moogsoft, a software developer that’s created a platform to detect issues such as outages or failed transactions in real-time.

Qadium, backed by O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures, has attracted $20m in series A capital from Darpa, the US Pentagon’s investment division.

DocPlanner books in EBRD for $20m series C.

Funding

Merck, the Germany-based drug developer, has doubled its commitment to its corporate venturing subsidiary to $340m.

Salesforce Ventures has announced a $50m fund and incubator to help its corporate parent establish an ecosystem around its software development platform Lightning.