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Thanks to everyone who came to the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium this past week.
We are entering an “age of turbulence” – the theme for this month’s GCV Symposium at London’s County Hall. Whether caused by eventual economic downturn, protectionism or regulatory concerns over the impact of technology-led disruption, the headwinds for those providing innovation capital to entrepreneurs are only likely to increase.
Deals
Parvus Therapeutics lands $800m in Genentech deal
DoorDash has had one of the fastest growth spurts in memory and has just raised $600mfrom investors including SoftBank Vision Fund, in a round that boosted its valuation from $7.1bn to $12.6bn in just three months.
Baidu and Citic Bank have jointly invested some $576m in AIBank, but the online financial services provider is now seeking up to $1bn in external funding that it expects to raise in the coming months.
Back in the outside world, payment card processing service Marqeta has secured $260m in series E funding at a valuation of almost $2bn, a huge jump from the reported $545m valuation it achieved when last raising funds nearly a year ago.
Mafengwo’s core product is an online travel reviews and information platform, but it has added a range of travel services to its offering including hotel room and tour booking.
Gilead Sciences was among the participants in a $120m series B round for cell therapy developer AlloVir that was led by Fidelity Management and Research.
Drug development software producer Schrödinger has raised another $25m to take its latest round to $110m.
Digital identity verification and management platform developer Auth0 has meanwhile secured $103m at a valuation of more than $1bn.
Unit DX marks $25.5m in portfolio funding
Funds
Salesforce Ventures launched its fifth Trailblazer fund earlier and the fourth with an international focus. Europe Trailblazer Fund is equipped with $125m of capital and it comes after the unit committed a total of $250m to Trailblazer vehicles in Canada, Australia and Japan over the past year.
UnityPoint Health, the owner of 32 hospitals and home care services, has formed a strategic investment arm called UnityPoint Health Ventures Innovation Fund, and has provided it with $100m in capital.
Corporates coax third MD Start to close
PSL Innovation Fund reaches $72.3m
Exits
Bicycle Therapeutics rides into public markets
Just Bio to jump to Evotec
Vidyo enters Enghouse in $40m acquisition
Cross-border financial transfer platform TransferWise has also overseen a jump in valuation, to $3.5bn, through a $292m secondary transaction.
“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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