The Disney and JF Shea-backed toy robot maker has now secured almost $110m in total, after a regulatory filing indicated it has secured $23m in new funds.
Month: April 2017
Cirius forms $40m series A round
Pharmaceutical firm Novo and Frazier Healthcare Partners co-led a round that will be used to advance the company’s liver disease treatment through phase 2b trials.
Lyft’s series G goes up to $600m
Existing backer Rakuten has returned for a round that included a raft of investment firms, fueling speculation the ride hailing company is looking to go public relatively soon.
NetEase Cloud Music tunes up with $109m
Shanghai Media Group has led a series A round for the NetEase music streaming spinout that also featured a Hunan Broadcasting System investment subsidiary.
Deal count ticks up in Q1
In the first quarter of 2017, GCV Analytics tracked 563 funding rounds involving corporate venturers, a 7% increase over the 525 rounds recorded in Q1 2016. However, the estimated total investment slipped to $19.12bn, down 4% from $20.01bn last year. The US hosted almost half these funding rounds (272), while China came in second with… Continue reading Deal count ticks up in Q1
Fintech chatbots: Are they worth the hype?
“To accelerate advances in this space, both financial and strategic investors are starting to take notice and put money to work.”
Reinventure pioneers fintech venturing model
Profile: Reinventure
University venturing in Australia
Innovative region: Australia’s university venturing
Australia bolsters triple helix collaboration
Moves to strengthen corporate, government and university innovation links
Corporate-startup collaboration goes to the Heart
Tomasz Rudolf, founder and CEO of the Heart, a Warsaw-based European centre for corporate-startup collaboration, spoke to features editor Nicole Idar Lee about helping corporates develop “innovation muscles” and central Europe’s growing role as a digital sandbox for testing innovative ideas You set up the Heart after noticing that corporates were taking far too long… Continue reading Corporate-startup collaboration goes to the Heart
Let us roll before we can fly
Jon Lauckner, president of GM Ventures, Varun Jain, senior investment manager at Qualcomm Ventures and Raj Singh, managing director at JetBlue Technology Ventures, discuss why they believe autonomous ground-based vehicles will succeed more quickly than flying cars.
Airbus Ventures backs flying cars
Thomas d’Halluin, CEO of Airbus Ventures’ US office, shared with features editor Nicole Idar Lee a confident and well-argued view of the future of “urban air mobility”, which should include safe flying vehicles, and sooner than we think. Trained as an aerospace engineer, d’Halluin worked for Airbus in manufacturing, procurement, supply chain and finance roles… Continue reading Airbus Ventures backs flying cars
Flying cars versus autonomous vehicles
“The debate over flying cars versus autonomous vehicles is set for takeoff.”
CVCs back tech investment in the UK and Ireland
“Despite all the fears about Brexit, year-on-year investment was up 7%, and the number of companies being backed rose by 22%.”