Funds
Germany-based venture capital firm New High-Tech Gründerfonds’ fourth seed fund has reached a first close sized at more than €400m ($417m) featuring investors including pharmaceutical firms Boehringer Ingelheim, Medice and R-Biopharm, speciality chemical providers Atlanta, Wacker and Büfa, dental equipment manufacturers Dürr Dental and Voco Dental, retailer Schwarz Group, motion plastic developer Igus, furniture fitting producer Hettich, molecular insight provider Qiagen, digital printing service Cewe, machine builder Karl Mayer Group, conglomerate Wilh Werhahn, railway system developer Hübner Group, IT staffing service Etengo, engineering groups Brückner Group, Dräger and Robert Bosch, consulting firms Adesso and PricewaterhouseCoopers and financial services firms Deutsche Bank and Volksbank as well as Evonik Venture Capital, Leaps by Bayer and SAP.io, vehicles for speciality chemicals producer Evonik, pharmaceutical group Bayer and enterprise software provider SAP respectively. The LP roster also included Acondis, Haniel, GBU Gesellschaft für Beteiligungen, Vantage Value, Media + More Venture, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Bert Wilden New Trends, Franz Haniel & Cie, Orca Ventures, KfW Capital and German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.
Mauritius-headquartered venture capital firm Launch Africa Ventures has closed a $36.3m fund backed by CommerzVentures, the strategic investment arm of financial services firm Commerzbank. The firm has so far provided $24m for startups and typically invests $250,000 to $300,000 at seed and pre-series A stage.
US-based venture capital firm LegalTech Fund has closed a $28.5m fund with contributions from limited partners including e-signature technology provider DocuSign, equity management software producer Carta and law firms including McDermott Will & Emery and Orrick. Kapor Center Investments is also among the LPs.
Reverse mergers
Blade Therapeutics, a US-based fibrosis therapy developer backed by pharmaceutical firms Bristol Myers Squibb, Novartis and Pfizer, has agreed to cancel a reverse merger deal with special purpose acquisition company Biotech Acquisition Company announced in November 2021. The deal was set to value the merged business at just over $350m.
Funding
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