Nothing is more important for corporate venturing executives to be respected at Silicon Valley’s top table than that they hit exits out of the park. So it was reassuring for the asset class Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the US-based semiconductor company, has netted a 10 times return from its investment in US-based traffic navigation company Waze, which sold to Google for a reported $1.3bn, according to Nagraj Kashyap, managing director of Qualcomm Ventures. See yesterday’s news story.
The deal is a big win for Qualcomm Ventures, and given the need for corporate venturing to prove itself with exits, as many units are recently formed, a sign of how lucrative doing venture deals can be.
We should hopefully have more details on what Qualcomm did at the company, by the time of our July issue, which has as its monthly sector focus the information technology sector, as it is understood they added some strategic value, which is even more important for most corporates.
The deal is a feather in the cap of Karthee Madasamy, Qualcomm’s managing director for India and Israel, who is the man listed as Qualcomm’s main person for the company, and is a board observer there.
The deal is also good for Israel, one of the world’s most innovative regions. Israeli newspaper Haaretz has dubbed the deal “the most lucrative exit in Israeli history”, noting the companies’ 100 employees will receive an average of $1.2m. Waze was from Tel Aviv, and we will be doing our July Innovative Region piece on that city, having previously covered Israel.
For Waze’s $67m of funding raised in its history, it was also backed by BlueRun Ventures, the former corporate venturing unit of Finland-based handset manufacturer Nokia, which is currently fundraising. The firm declined to comment on its return or what this meant for its next fund. However, one would imagine the fundraising efforts for BlueRun’s fund five will have been boosted by the sale, despite complications with some of its investor base including Nokia reupping to the fund, reported by news provider PE Hub.
Waze looks to have been a nice drive for its investors including Qualcomm Ventures and BlueRun. Given the boom in investing from corporates in recent years it may be we could be set for a number of other splashy exit announcements.