Daniel Karp, a GCV Emerging Leaders 2021 award winner as director of US-listed network equipment provider Cisco’s corporate venturing unit, has joined venture capital firm Cervin Ventures as a partner.
Karp said he will target infrastructure deals around cloud/cloud-native, development operations and tools, security, networking, operations and observability in his new role.
Cervin has had a successful run as a VC under managing partner Preetish Nijhawan, with two of its portfolio companies, LaunchDarkly and Snaplogic, now valued north of $1bn following two large rounds last year, he said in a review of 2021.
Karp joined Cisco Investments in 2013 and concentrated on investment and acquisition opportunities in Israel and Latin America as director of mergers and acquisitions and venture capital.
His Cisco portfolio has resulted in exits of over $2.5bn, with AI chipset producer Habana Labs acquired by Intel for $2bn, GuardiCore, Prospera and Celeno bought for a total of over $1.2bn, Elastifile and Stratoscale also purchased and Jungo Connectivity floating in Israel.
Before joining Cisco, Karp was a senior strategy manager at software producer Microsoft, where he oversaw the strategy of its internal incubation projects arm, Startup Business Group, and the firm’s research subsidiary, Microsoft Research.
