Anand Kamannavar took up the global head role of Applied Ventures (AV), the corporate venture capital arm of semiconductor manufacturing technology provider Applied Materials (Amat), earlier this year.
Omkaram ‘Om’ Nalamasu, senior vice-president and chief technical officer of Amat and president of AV, said: “Anand is deeply engaged across the whole Materials to Systems innovation ecosystem that AV is investing in and has played a critical role in identifying, creating the thesis, and leading venture investments and guiding product development teams to enable large global inflections in artificial intelligence, 5G, augmented reality and virtual reality, cloud, life sciences and clean energy industry verticals and is one of industry’s deep tech thought leaders.
“He previously led AV’s early-stage investments and served on board of [now Nasdaq-listed] Adesto Technologies (acquired by Dialog for $500m), [now Nasdaq-listed] Enphase Energy (more than $7bn market cap) and Voltaix (acquired by Air Liquide, more than $250m). He also previously led the new business development (BD) group at Applied and led the incubation of key growth programs in life sciences, optics and coatings.
“Anand has deep domain engineering and product experience in the technology industry. Before his career in venture and BD, he was an integral part of Hewlett Packard’s high-performance computing team where he was awarded key design patents.
“Anand has been a passionate advocate of open innovation and has been very effective in building high-performance diverse teams and working collaboratively with both internal and external stakeholders in delivering both strategic and financial returns to Amat.
“I am proud of Anand and the AV team that are driving investments in key focus areas in main innovation hubs all over the globe and look forward to seeing Anand and the AV team to continue to take a bigger role in Materials to Systems startup global ecosystem and broader CVC community.
“AV has over $300m assets under management and has invested in over 85 startups to date in 15 countries. Anand has made and managed over 20 venture investments which have resulted in multiple initial public offerings and acquisitions. He currently leads a team that oversees a total of 35 global investments, while currently serving on boards of eXo Imaging, Ultivue, Solid Energy and Ontera.”
Kamannavar has strengthened the collaboration between AV’s portfolio companies and Amat business units, as well as supporting portfolio companies through follow-on deals, staffing and introducing them to channel partners.
The unit most recently took part in semiconductor manufacturing technology developer Inpria’s $31m series C round in February 2020. In addition, medical imaging technology developer eXo Imaging had raised a $35m series B round in August 2019 while biological detection system developer Ultivue secured $22m in a series C round two months earlier.
Kamannavar had worked for AV as a senior VC director for 12 years from 2006, then assumed the head of new BD role simultaneously from 2013. Before rejoining the unit in January 2020, he held a two-year stint as general partner at Partnership Ventures.
He started his career as a co-founder of financial data technology provider Precision Information Systems, then worked for enterprise technology producer Hewlett Packard.
He then joined Atlas Ventures and Arch Development Partners to identify investment opportunities for alternative energy, internet, web 2.0, media, software and medical technology developers.
Kamannavar holds an MBA with honours from University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and earned a master of science degree in electrical and electronics engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
