Japan-headquartered internet and telecommunications group SoftBank is spinning off its Latin America Fund into an independent vehicle called Upload Ventures, it announced today.
SoftBank initially launched the vehicle – also known as SoftBank Innovation Fund – under the auspices of group chief operating officer Marcelo Claure in 2019 with a $2bn capital allocation and a $5bn target for its close.
The unit added a $3bn second fund in September 2021, by which time it had built a portfolio including Kavak, the Mexico-based used automotive marketplace most recently valued at $8.7bn, and Brazil-based online real estate portal QuintoAndar, which last raised cash at a $5.1bn valuation.
Claure, however, left the company in January this year, with contemporary reports claiming he had favoured spinning out the fund, only to be overruled by SoftBank chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son.
Reports last week suggested SoftBank is preparing to reduce the velocity of its corporate venturing investment after a fervent first quarter that took place amidst a downturn in public market valuations.
SoftBank is set to remain the majority investor in Upload Ventures, which will invest about $100m per year in companies once the spinoff process is complete, an event expected to take place by the end of this month according to Bloomberg.
The fund will be overseen by managing partners Rodrigo Baer and Marco Camhaji with venture partner Norberto Giangrande. The first two joined SoftBank in the second half of 2021 to work under Claure on Latin American deals while Giangrande has ample experience as an angel investor.
Camhaji had been in a business development role at e-commerce group Amazon before being hired, having also spent a three-year stint at venture capital firm Redpoint eVentures between 2013 and 2016. Baer meanwhile joined directly from Redpoint eVentures where he had been a partner.
The managing partners will head up a 12-person team and Upload Ventures will retain the Latin America fund’s existing portfolio while favouring more early-stage deals. Other unicorns in that portfolio include based digital bank Ualá, online finance provider Creditas and payment card reader producer Clip.
SoftBank is merely the most recent corporate to spin off an internal investment vehicle, with some of the larger examples from recent years including NGP Capital (from communications equipment maker Nokia), Sapphire Ventures (from enterprise software producer SAP) and Propel (from banking firm BBVA).
However, the move is a blow to the wider Latin America startup community as SoftBank had been the largest corporate investor in the region by some distance, and may well make it trickier for growth-stage companies to raise significant funding without moving to more economically developed nations such as the United States.
