The number of corporate-backed rounds in January was 225, up slightly from the 208 deals tracked in the same month last year. Investment value, however, dropped to $9.39bn – down 38% from $15.2bn in January 2018. January’s figures were somewhat higher than the 205 rounds in December last year, but lower than the 240 in reported in November.
The US hosted most corporate-backed deals with 112 rounds, China was second with 28, the UK third with 14 and Japan fourth with 11. The leading corporate investors by number of deals were diversified conglomerate Alphabet, telecoms group SoftBank and real estate firm Alexandria. In terms of involvement in the largest deals, SoftBank also topped the ranking, along with financial services and investment group Fidelity and Alphabet.
GCV Analytics reported 17 corporate-backed funding initiatives in January, including VC funds, new venturing units, incubators, accelerators and others. This figure is a slight decrease compared with December, when there were 19 such initiatives. The estimated capital raised in those initiatives totalled $878m, up slightly from the $735m tracked in the last month of 2018.
Deals
Emerging businesses from the health, IT, financial, services, consumer and transport sectors raised the largest number of deals during the first month of 2019. The most active corporate venturers came from the financial services, IT and health sectors. One of the top 10 deals was above $1bn.
SoftBank invested $2bn in US-based workspace provider WeWork, which has rebranded to the We Company, reportedly at a $47bn valuation. WeWork runs shared workspaces in cities across 30 countries, where users can access office equipment, high-speed internet, meeting rooms and free coffee under short-term flexible agreements. It made a $1.22bn loss in the first nine months of 2018 from $1.25bn in revenue.
Bird, a US-based e-scooter rental service backed by real estate developer Simon Property Group, raised a $600m C round. At first, the round stood at $300m but it was subsequently doubled. The extension was led by Fidelity, at a reported valuation of $2bn. Founded in 2017, Bird’s service enables users to book an electric scooter through an app. The vehicle can be left at the destination rathr than returned to a station. The service was present in roughly 100 cities by September 2018, when it exceeded 10 million rides.
Brainbees Solutions, the India-based operator of childcare products retailer FirstCry, secured $150m from the SoftBank Vision Fund. The investment was the first tranche of a round with a $400m target. FirstCry was valued at $850m for the first close, with the full round said to value the business at $975m to $1.1bn. Founded in 2010, FirstCry operates an online shop and 183 bricks-and-mortar stores in 29 Indian states selling toys, clothing, high chairs and parenting books. FirstCry will use the cash to scale its multimedia parenting platform and develop a range of own-brand labels.
Insurance firm China Life co-led a RMB2.4bn ($356m) series A round for China-based supply chain services provider Jusda. Investment manager CICC was the other co-leading investor through its CICC Capital unit. Venture capital group IDG Capital, engineering services firm China Railway Group as well as financial services firms Titanium Capital and Yuanhe Origin Investment also participated. Formed as an affiliate of manufacturing services firm Foxconn and rebranded in 2015, Jusda has a platform using artificial intelligence and big data to manage diversified supply chains.
BridgeBio Pharma, a US-based developer of treatments for genetic diseases, raised about $299m from investors including insurance and financial services group AIG. Private equity firms KKR and Viking Global Investors co-led the round, which also featured an unnamed participant described as a “blue-chip long-term investor”. Founded in 2015, BridgeBio looks to develop research conducted at pharmaceutical research groups, universities and academic medical centres, seeking treatments for genetic diseases in areas such as oncology, cardiology, neurology, genetic dermatology, endocrinology, ophthalmology and kidney disease. The company has a pipeline of more than 15 assets, each of which have already been allocated to an individual company, and four of which are nearing clinical trial.
China-based online education services provider Dada raised $255m in a series D round featuring TAL Education. Private equity firm Warburg Pincus led the round and venture capital fund Yonghua Capital participated. Founded in 2013 as DadaABC, the company operates an online tutoring platform teaching English to children aged four to 16. The company has partnered the American Tesol Institute and tailors its courses to existing curricula.
US-based augmented reality (AR) game studio Niantic secured $245m in a series C round featuring eSports platform Axiomatic and Samsung Ventures, the venturing subsidiary of consumer electronics producer Samsung. Institutional Venture Partners led the round, which included two other venture capital firms, Battery Ventures and Causeway Media Partners. The transaction reportedly valued Niantic at almost $4bn post-money. Spun off in 2015 from Alphabet, where it had been incubated since 2010, Niantic develops AR games and received the funding as it prepares to add a new title, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, to a product range that includes Pokemon Go.
US-based cryptocurrency trading platform Bakkt received almost $183m from investors including software producer Microsoft, payment technology provider PayU and futures exchanges operator Intercontinental Exchange. The round also featured consulting firm Boston Consulting Group, crypto-asset manager CMT Digital, trading firm Eagle Seven and merchant bank Galaxy Digital. Established in August 2018 by Intercontinental Exchange, Bakkt will operate a regulated institutional-grade exchange for digital assets, initially focusing on trading and converting cryptocurrency Bitcoin to traditional currencies. The platform has been created to connect existing markets, clearing and warehousing services to an ecosystem that is expected to include merchant and consumer applications.
US-based metal 3D printing company Desktop Metal closed a $160m round, which was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies, a subsidiary of chemicals and energy conglomerate Koch Industries. Other corporate backers included GV, the corporate venturing vehicle of Alphabet, electronics producer Panasonic and hardware provider Techtronic Industries. The funding will be used to develop the company’s additive manufacturing technology and scale it. Founded in 2015, Desktop Metal has developed 3D metal printers for use in both office and industrial settings.
China-based oncology drug developer Antengene closed a $120m series B round backed by insurance company Taikang and pharmaceutical firms Celgene and WuXi AppTec. Private equity firms Boyu Capital and FountainVest Partners co-led the round. WuXi AppTec invested through corporate venturing vehicle WuXi Corporate Venture Fund. Antengene is developing cancer therapies with a focus on those with a high unmet medical need in China and the Asia-Pacific region. The company has five candidates in development, including lead assets targeting hepatitis B virus positive hepatocellular carcinoma and other types of cancer, including multiple haematological malignancies and solid tumours.
Exits
In January, GCV Analytics tracked 16 exits with corporate venturers participating as either acquirers or exiting investors. The transactions included one initial public offering and 15 acquisitions.
The number of exits was higher than December, when there were only eight. Total estimated exited capital amounted to $3.09bn, up 107% from the $1.49bn estimated for the previous month.
OLX Group, a classified listings subsidiary of e-commerce and media group Naspers, paid $1.16bn to increase its stake in Russia-based online classifieds and property listings platform Avito to 99.6%. Naspers had increased its stake over various funding rounds. Avito maintains an online classified listings platform with 10.3 million daily visitors covering property, consumer goods, vehicles, services and jobs. OLX covers five continents with a total of 350 million monthly active users.
Mass media company Viacom agreed to acquire US-based online television streaming service Pluto TV for $340m, enabling corporate media and entertainment groups Sky, ProSiebenSat.1, UTA, Universal Music Group, Samsung Scripps and Windsor Media to exit. Pluto has an online platform with more than 12 million monthly active users who can stream content from more than 100 customised channels through connected TVs or mobile apps. Viacom said it was buying the company to enhance its presence in new distribution platforms and advanced advertising activities.
Medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific acquired the rest of the shares in one of its portfolio companies, US-based mitral regurgitation system developer Millipede Medical, for $325m. Millipede will receive an additional $125m payment based on an unspecified commercial milestone. Founded in 2012, Millipede is developing a medical device to treat patients with severe mitral regurgitation – a condition that causes blood to flow the wrong way in the heart – who cannot tolerate open-heart surgery. The device is inserted through a transcatheter procedure and can be administered either as a standalone therapy or in conjunction with other treatments.
Maoyan Entertainment, a China-based online film ticketing platform backed by corporates Enlight Media, Tencent and Meituan Dianping, raised $250m in an IPO. The company floated at the foot of the HK$14.80 ($1.89) and HK$20.40 range it had set earlier, at a $2.2bn valuation, issuing 132 million shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Formed in 2012 as a subsidiary of group buying platform Meituan, Maoyan runs an online cinema ticketing platform that had 130 million monthly active users by September 2018. The company is the exclusive film ticket vendor for Meituan Dianping, the local services platform formed by Meituan’s merger with Dianping.
CloudEndure, a US-based data recovery technology developer backed by corporates including IT services provider Infosys, was acquired by e-commerce and cloud computing firm Amazon for $200m. Infosys was to divest its stake in CloudEndure for approximately $15.3m. Founded in 2012, CloudEndure has developed a cloud migration and disaster recovery platform to move data between physical, virtual and cloud-based infrastructures. The software offers continuous backups to prevent data loss.
Samsung agreed to buy Israel-based portfolio company and smartphone camera technology producer Corephotonics in a $155m deal that gave exits to several corporates, including Samsung’s venturing unit Samsung Ventures, memory card maker SanDisk and hard disk provider Western Digital. Corephotonics designs dual-camera technology that helps mobile device users take professional photographs, integrating capabilities such as optical zoom, low-light performance, depth features and optical image stabilisation
E-commerce firm Alibaba acquired Germany-based Data Artisans for €90m ($103m), allowing retail group Tengelmann and semiconductor and data technology producer Intel to exit. Founded in 2014, Data Artisans has developed a data-stream processing platform based on Apache Flink, the open-source software created by the company’s founders. The platform enables enterprises to build applications capable of reacting to data in real time. Alibaba had been a Data Artisans partner since 2016, and the company described it as one of the biggest contributors to its codebase.
Educational app developer Byju’s acquired US-based connected toy maker Osmo in a $120m deal that provided several corporate investors with exits, including toy producer Mattel, educational publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, television producer Sesame Workshop and real estate developer JF Shea. Founded in 2013, Osmo builds and sells educational toys, puzzles, board games and robots that are connected to online apps for children between five and 12.
Quovo, a US-based investment and brokerage aggregation platform backed by enterprise software producer Salesforce, agreed to an acquisition by banking technology provider Plaid. Financial terms of the acquisition were not officially disclosed, but sources told Bloomberg the deal would be worth up to $200m after taking into account performance bonuses. Founded in 2009, Quovo has developed software that offers financial analytics and data management to investors with bank-level security measures, providing features such as automated clearing house payments, stress tests and internal audits. Plaid, which has developed technology enabling apps to connect to a user’s bank account, will use Quovo to expand its capabilities to a wider range of assets.
US-based marketing technology provider CM Group acquired Sailthru, a US-based digital marketing software creator that had raised funding from internet company AOL’s now defunct AOL Ventures unit, for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2008, Sailthru operates a digital marketing platform that exploits artificial intelligence and predictive analytics for marketing across email, web and mobile distribution channels. The platform can automate mailshots and predict how consumers are likely to engage with a client’s brand.
Note: Monthly data can fluctuate as additional data are reported after GCV goes to press