Jon Soberg is CEO and managing partner of MS&AD Ventures, the overseas corporate venturing subsidiary of Japan-based insurance firm MS&AD Holdings.
MS&AD Ventures was set up as MS&AD Insurance Group’s first overseas corporate venture capital unit. The unit focuses on early-stage AI, fintech, insurtech, cybersecurity and climate, and has broadened to include supply chain and health.
The unit has made 110 investments and had 12 exits since it was founded in 2018, and had more than $100m calculated actuals – real recorded revenues – from business units in 2023 alone.
Soberg says: “I always do whatever I can to help our portfolio companies, and we always want to be the first call when someone needs help. We use the term ‘VC+C’, which means we try to be the most supportive VC and we bring the strength of the corporation to help as well.”
“”I always do whatever I can to help our portfolio companies, and we always want to be the fi rst call when someone needs help.”
In the past year, Soberg’s team, which has grown by three members, has made more than 20 investments, the most notable being Flex, a financial services superapp in which it invested $3m prior to its series A, and BeeHero, a developer of beehive technology platform.
Its most recent exit is Rubrik, a cloud data management company founded in 2014, which went to IPO in April 2024.
Soberg co-founded MS&AD Ventures in October 2018, having been a venture capitalist for a decade, with a track record including 19 that have achieved unicorn valuations and returns of more than $1.5bn to his investors.
He is known for being among the first cohort of investors from Silicon Valley to invest at the seed stage globally and for his focus on financial technologies and applying data and analytics to change industries.
Soberg graduated as a Palmer Scholar with an MBA in entrepreneurial management and marketing from Wharton, and he holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. ■
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