Tag: Torax

3 April 2017 – Panasonic Puts $100m into Corporate Venturing and Much More

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Funds

Panasonic to put $100m into corporate venturing

German consumer product and industrial manufacturer Henkel has been exploring corporate venturing over the past year as part of a larger open innovation strategy, and has now formalised its investing by forming a dedicated venture capital unit, Henkel Ventures.

Intex enters corporate venturing with Rooter investment

Phoenix rises with corporate-backed fund

Government Department

Canada unveils 2017 budget

Exits

Alteryx processes $126m IPO

Ayondo aims to float at $158m valuation

Buzzfeed has quietly begun prep work for a 2018 IPO, unnamed industry sources have told Axios, although rival paper FT was doubtful. T

Akcea Therapeutics, which was spun out of Ionis Pharmaceuticals in 2015 to develop cardiometabolic disease treatments, has filed to raise up to $100m in an initial public offering.

Boston Scientific snatches Symetis for $435m

Sirrus proves the right formula for Nippon Shokubai

Ethicon extracts Torax in acquisition deal

Quixey closure reportedly due to Alibaba debt deal

Deals

News broke last week that SoftBank was lining up a $1bn investment in Southeast Asian ride hailing platform Grab, and now sources have told Bloomberg it could provide a mammoth $6bn in funding to another on-demand ride service, China’s Didi Chuxing.

Flipkart may have just raised $1bn, in a round backed by eBay, Microsoft and Tencent, but the drop in its valuation from $15.5bn in 2015 to $10bn reflects a downturn in India’s e-commerce sector in general, which this week’s Big Deal explores.

JD Finance, the financial services spinout of Chinese e-commerce firm JD.com, is reportedly raising funding at a $7.3bn valuation.

Tencent helps treat Haodaifu Online to $200m

Online grocery startups seem to have been more popular in Asia but now a Netherlands-based company called Picnic has come on the scene, raising $109m in a round led by NPM Capital, the private equity arm of trading group SHV Holdings.

Indian logistics service provider Delhivery has pulled in $100m from Carlyle Group and Tiger Global, and could extend the round to $150m, with Fosun potentially putting in $30m.

UCloud, the China-based cloud computing services provider backed by Bertelsmann and Legend Holdings, has raised $139m in a series D round co-led by Oriza Holdings and CICC Alpha.

Quantum computing circuit developer Rigetti Computing has disclosed $64m of funding across two rounds – a $24m series A featuring Bloomberg Beta and a $40m series B. The technology is still in a fairly nascent state but if quantum computing manages to take off in a big way that Bloomberg investment could generate a pretty substantial return.

Government Department

Benson Hill to grow with $25m series B

University Corner

Saphlux lights up $5m investment

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

15 August 2016 – VR and Food Delivery Investments, GV People Moves and more

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People

Friday was Bill Maris’s last day at GV, the corporate venturing unit he helped to set up for search engine Google in 2009. But it is a new start for David Krane, who is taking the CEO position at GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) and who will have a tough act to follow in Maris.

Eze Vidra, who helped GV set up its aborted European branch in 2014, has taken the chief innovation officer role at clinical trial connection platform TrialReach.

Vosik Shamsiev, a venture partner at Japan-based corporate venturing unit TEL Venture Capital since 2014, is leaving to pursue opportunities in Canada.

Citi’s strategic investment subsidiary has hired Travis Skelly from venture capital fund FinTech Collective as a senior vice-president. No announcement as yet on Debby Hopkins’ replacement.

Joydeep Bose joined Cisco from Intel Capital in 2007 and oversaw its corporate venturing activities in the Asia Pacific Japan region. D

Funds

Telstra and Telekom Indonesia form investment pact

Infosys lines up $15m Stellaris commitment

Exits

Wal-Mart has agreed to acquire Jet.com in a $3.3bn cash and share deal said to be the largest ever acquisition of an e-commerce company, and which will be marked down as a big win for investors including Alphabet and Alibaba.

CME Group looks like it’s secured a decent exit from deep learning technology provider Nervana Systems, just over a year after its corporate venturing vehicle, CME Ventures, took part in a $20.5m series B round.

In another sizeable acquisition, Myriad Genetics has agreed to buy precision medicine developer Assurex Health for up to $410m, giving exits to Mayo Clinic and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Naspers to squeeze out Citrus Pay acquisition

Protagonist Therapeutics has raised $90m in an IPO that gave exits to pharmaceutical firms Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly and Pharmstandard, which collectively held a 45% stake in the company.

Investments

CVRx, the producer of an implantable treatment for heart failure and resistant hypertension, has sealed $93m in equity funding.

Torax strengthens with $25m

Moderna Therapeutics closed the largest round ever by a VC-stage drug developer in January 2015, and one of the investors in that round, pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, has invested another $140m to take its stake in the mRNA therapeutics company to 9%.

Turner has led a $45m round for female-focused digital media company Refinery29 as part of a strategic collaboration that will involve it developing video content for Turner’s TV channels.

The Walt Disney Company had been set to team up with Major League Baseball in a funding round for daily sports betting platform FanDuel last year but pulled out at the last minute. The two have now formed a partnership of a different kind, with Disney agreeing to pay $1bn for a 33% stake in BamTech, the online video streaming platform spun out by MLB. BamTech will also set up a paid video subscription platform for Disney subsidiary ESPN as part of the deal.

Andy Bechtolsheim (Sun cofounder and Google’s angel), and Diane Greene (VMware cofounder and Google board as head of cloud) along with corporates Major League Baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers back Xperiel, a US-based provider of a mobile app development tool that works with Internet-connected equipment in sports stadiums and other facilities, $7m round.

Deliveroo raised $100m in November and has added $275m less than a year later with a series E round featuring Nokia Growth Partners.

Healthcare concierge service Accolade has added $70m from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Madrona Venture Group to the $22.5m in series E funding it raised from McKesson Ventures and Independence Health last year, taking its overall financing to almost $150m.

Comcast targets Interactions in $56m round

Axial capitalises on Comcast backing to raise $14m

NextVR closes an $80m series B round at a pre-money valuation of $800m.

Kaltura has been at the online video game longer than NextVR and is gearing up for an IPO, raising $50m from Goldman Sachs’ Private Capital Investing group.

Yunnex, the Chinese developer of an advanced, connected point-of-sales system, has secured $45m in a series B round backed by one of its customers, fast food chain Ajisen Ramen.

Corporates dish up another $30m for iFood

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