A series of tech buyouts and mergers will see an increasing number of corporate venturing units merge with a commensurate shake-up in personnel.
Aymerik Renard (pictured) has been made director of US-based data storage provider Western Digital’s corporate venturing unit, which has invested more than $250m in more than 20 startups under chief strategy officer Mark Long.
Western Digital Capital’s most recent deals were last month’s $4.5m round for Kazan Networks, where it invested alongside fellow CVC units Samsung Ventures and Intel Capital, and as co-lead for data storage provider Upthere’s $77m round in July.
Renard said he would report to Daniel Flynn, who also oversees mergers and acquisitions and post-merger integration for Long. Flynn said more would be announced after the summer.
Renard said on his LinkedIn page: “I am currently heading the North American venture capital investing efforts at Western Digital, with an eye on Europe and Asia as well.
“I came to Western Digital via its [$19bn] acquisition of SanDisk, where I led the US venture activity. Western Digital Capital [is] stage agnostic, investing alongside financial and corporate VCs in seed to expansion stage startups.
“Our portfolio spans cutting-edge components, systems, and software technologies across memory storage, cloud, data center, big data, the internet of things, mobile, wearables, virtual and augmented reality, and frontier tech, for the benefit of consumers as well as the enterprise.”
Before Renard joined in early 2014, SanDisk and Western Digital Capital had co-invested in at least one deal, the $35m series C round closed by Tegile Systems, a US-based provider of enterprise storage arrays, in August 2013.
Others in the SanDisk Ventures team have left, including Preetha Parthasarathy who joined Intel Capital’s Diversity Fund as an investment director in February 2016, while others have moved across, including Amir Fridman, who covered Europe and Israel for SanDisk Ventures and said he was now doing so for Western Digital.
Similar changes are expected with the merger of Dell and EMC, as their respective corporate venturing units are due to be combined in the next month.
Dell Ventures said: “Dell is in the process of acquiring EMC and we expect the deal to close in the next month. Once the transaction is final, Dell Ventures and EMC ventures will be operating as a single team. Unfortunately, we are not able to discuss day to day operations until the deal closes.”