Over the month we have tracked 122 deals worth an estimated total of $9.55bn involving corporate venturing investors. More than half of those deals (72) took place in the US. However, some of the top rounds, including a record-setter, occurred in China.
The number of deals involving corporate VCs in June exceeded the number of such deals over the preceding two months – 122 versus 94 in May and 119 in April. Also in terms of total capital raised in rounds, we have seen a rebound from the slowdown observed in May.
June featured a lower number of deals with corporate venturing investors than the same month last year – 122 versus 135 – but the total capital raised in corporate-backed deals was substantially higher – $9.55bn versus $4.66bn in 2015.
The increase has undoubtedly been influenced by large deals in China – the largest venture round yet was raised there, as described below.
The leading corporate investors by number of deals were Alphabet, Intel and International Data Group, while the top three in terms of involvement in large deals were all from China – Alibaba, Tencent and China Life.
Deals
Emerging enterprises from the IT, health, consumer and media sectors attracted most corporate investors in June.
At the same time, corporate venturing investors from the IT, financial services and media sectors were the most active investors, as shown on the deal heatmap overleaf.
China-based ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing closed the largest financing round yet by a private venture capital-backed company, raising $7.3m in debt and equity, accoring to the Wall Street Journal. It raised $4.5bn in equity funding from Apple, China Life Insurance, Tencent, SoftBank, Alibaba and Ant Financial, and an additional $2.8bn in debt.
Ant Financial, the financial services affiliate of e-commerce firm Alibaba, is among the investors to commit $150m to a new China-based mutual insurance association. Xinmei Life Mutual Insurance Association is one of only three mutual insurance associations to have secured approval from the Chinese government. The company secured capital from Ant Financial and seven other backers, including Tianhong Asset Management, a direct investment subsidiary of securities firm Sinolink Securities.
Thrive Market, a US-based grocery e-commerce platform backed by media company Scripps Network, raised $111m in a funding round led by investment firm Invus, the New York Times reported. The round also featured existing investors including venture capital firms Greycroft Partners, E.ventures and Cross Culture Ventures.
US-based invoicing platform provider Tradeshift attracted $75m in series D funding from investors including financial services firm HSBC and payment processing service American Express’s corporate venturing arm American Express Ventures. The round was led by Data Collective and also featured CreditEase’s Fintech Investment Fund, Notion Capital and Pavilion Capital.
Social media company Twitter invested $70m in Germany-based music streaming platform SoundCloud through its Twitter Ventures unit, according to Recode. Twitter made the investment as part of a series E round likely to reach $100m, which would value SoundCloud at $700m.
Exits
We tracked 19 exits in June, most of which took place in the US. It was announced last month that Salesforce Ventures, the venturing arm of Salesforce, is set to exit US-based cloud security provider CloudLock after networking equipment manufacturer Cisco agreed to buy it for $293m.
Sapphire Ventures, the VC firm spun out of software company SAP, is to exit US-based data analytics platform Recommind following the company’s acquisition by enterprise software producer OpenText for $163m. Recommind’s technology enables the retrieval of information from large datasets.
Singapore-based mobile advertising company Smaato, backed by media company Singapore Press Holdings, is to be acquired by marketing company Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communication for $148m. Founded in 2005, Smaato operates a real-time ad bidding exchange for mobile websites and apps.
NantHealth, a personalised healthcare technology developer and spinout from US-based health technology producer NantWorks, backed by several corporates, began trading on Nasdaq last month, raising $91m. The company priced 6.5 million shares at $14 each.
Selecta Biosciences, a US-based biopharmaceutical company backed by pharmaceutical firm Sanofi, raised $70m in an initial public offering on Nasdaq, pricing 5 million shares at $14 each. The price represented the lower end of the range set by Selecta but the number of shares in the offering was increased from 4.25 million.
People
It was announced that Deborah Hopkins, chief innovation officer at the US-listed bank Citi and CEO of Citi Ventures, is expected to retire at the end of the year. Hopkins founded and built Citi Ventures and her departure is part of succession planning. She is expected to establish her own advisory firm, increase her board service and lend her support to various women’s initiatives.
US-based networking equipment manufacturer Cisco lost its research and development team, according to Recode. Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero and Soni Jiandani, left after three of them were initially reassigned. The team was set up by Robbins’ predecessor John Chambers with the aim of exclusively funding spin-in startups developing innovate networking products.
Mony Hassid, managing director of Qualcomm Ventures in Israel, has left to rejoin his former boss at Microsoft. Hassid is now general manager and MD at Microsoft Ventures in Israel reporting to Nagraj Kashyap, former head of Qualcomm Ventures, until earlier this year before he was recruited by Microsoft.
US-listed security and aerospace company Lockheed Martin has hired Christopher Moran for the new role of executive director and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures. Moran spent eight years from 2005 as general manager of Applied Ventures, the venturing unit of Applied Materials, before leaving a few years ago.
Nikesh Arora has left Japan-based internet and telecoms group SoftBank, where he spearheaded its corporate venturing strategy as company president and chief operating officer. Arora joined SoftBank in late 2014 from Google where he was chief business officer.
Intel Capital promoted four people to managing director, a rank that now comes with “expanded responsibilities,” after a team structure review and following the departure of some vice-presidents, including Lisa Lambert, last month. The new post-holders are Ameet Bhansali, covering new technologies, including augmented and virtual reality, wearables, robotics and drones; Anthony Lin, for the greater Asia region; Trina Van Pelt, for the internet-of-things sector; and Bob Nunn, leading M&A and business development on the datacentre, cloud computing and big data sector.
Julia Rebholz, founder and head of Ignite, the UK’s first energy-based corporate impact investment fund, left to join a consultancy encouraging other companies to set up similar funds.
Takayuki Inagawa has replaced Nobuyuki Akimoto as head of NTT Docomo Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of Japan-based phone operator NTT.
