SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son announced that his investment giant will cut startup investments by 50% to 75%. In so doing, he joins a chorus of investors reconsidering their exposure to VC, as well as VCs themselves noting poor market conditions and anticipating belt-tightening. More: - The pledge is also related to Son’s promise to keep SoftBank’s loan-to-value ratio below 25%.
- At the end of March, it stood at 20.4%.
- The announcement came during an earnings call yesterday.
- The call also revealed that the two funds of SoftBank’s Vision Fund arm lost a combined $26.2B in the last quarter.
- The group's annual net loss was $13.15B.
- Its assets, including the Latin American funds, were worth $175.6B at the end of March, compared with an acquisition cost of $141.6B.
- That dip, the arm’s largest to date, stands in absolute contradiction to the record-breaking profits it posted in the same period last year.
- It is largely due to collapsing share prices for public tech companies.
- South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang is trading 70% below its listing price, while Didi Global and Grab also tumbled during the January-March quarter.
- While 20 of its private portfolio companies managed to raise new funding in the last three months at higher valuations, SoftBank had to mark down several unlisted assets in sectors such as consumer, fintech, and transportation.
- The Vision Fund arm has 475 companies in its portfolio and made 43 investments during the fourth quarter.
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Carbon Clean, provider of a factory emissions capture platform, raised $150M Series C led by oil giant Chevron. Cement producer CEMEX, Saudi Aramco, and Samsung Ventures all got in on the deal, which was made at an unknown valuation. More: - Carbon Clean claims the goal of carrying out industrial decarbonization on a gigaton scale by the mid-2030s.
- To that end, it claims that its technology has the potential to cut scrubbing costs in half to around $30 per ton.
- Known as the CycloneCC, the company’s carbon capture equipment is reportedly around 10 times smaller than competitors’.
- The module can fit in a shipping container and absorbs CO2 via liquid chemicals known as amine scrubbers and then boiling off the CO2 for storage.
- While there seems to be a contradiction inherent in taking an oil company’s money, Carbon Clean founder and CEO Aniruddha Sharma noted both that the emissions expertise in companies like Chevron is massive and that combatting oil producers’ emissions will have the biggest initial impact.
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 A message from LOHIKA Developing Your Team Strategically Versus Expanding to Meet a Delivery Commitment Growing and scaling an engineering team is never simple. In an ideal world, engineering leaders have the opportunity to scale the team in a strategic fashion. We don’t live in an ideal world 😜 Instead, we’re often faced with a short-term deliverable: a product release, a new feature or an emergency bug fix. We partnered with our friends at London CTOs for an upcoming online event. We assembled a panel of engineering leaders to discuss how to develop a team strategically rather than expanding to meet a delivery commitment. The panel: The event takes place on May 18, 2022 at 1pm BST (British Summer Time) / 9am ET. Register Here
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 In the first four months of 2022, 16 new funds where at least 60% of decision-makers are women raised $4.5B, reports The Information. The latter figure constitutes $800M more than 2021’s total, albeit distributed over 36 fewer vehicles. More: - 2021 itself saw a large improvement in women-led VC funds compared with 2020, when only $1.8B in dry powder was committed to 29 funds headed by female VCs.
- Two large funds are responsible for the majority of the this year’s total:
- Forerunner Ventures, founded by consumer tech investor Kirsten Green, and Haun Ventures, founded by former a16z partner Katie Haun, pulled in a combined $2.5B in capital commitments.
- How this development will affect female founders seems fairly straightforward: A 2019 study by the IFC found that female VC and PE partners invest in almost twice as many female entrepreneurs as male partners do.
- To date, women-led funds raise only a sliver of total venture capacity, but their share is growing and reached 3% last year, up from 0.85% in 2019.
- Due in part to firms doubling down on late-stage portfolio companies, which are at this time led mainly by men, the share of funding going to female-led companies has remained at 2% each year since 2018.
- Still, the total amount of money invested in such companies increased to $6.4B last year, from $3.5B in 2020.
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Interswitch, an electronic payments company targeting the African market, pulled in $110M from LeapFrog Investments and Tana Africa Capital. The Lagos-based company did not disclose a new valuation but was already valued at $1B during its last funding round. More: - That funding saw Visa pay $200M for a 20% stake in the company and took place almost three years ago.
- At the time, CEO Mitchell Elegbe reported that the company was considering a dual listing in London and Nigeria, plans which have been seemingly nixed given today’s and 2019’s rounds.
- The 20-year-old fintech operation has substantially built out its capacities in the interim; since its launch, it has issued 35 million active cards, making it the largest debit card issuer on the continent.
- It is moreover largely responsible for much of the online banking infrastructure in its home country of Nigeria.
- Interswitch is also known for its POS terminals and online consumer payment platforms, Quickteller and Verve.
- LeapFrog and Tana have both acquired shares from existing Interswitch shareholders, including Ignite Holdco Limited, and pumped fresh capital into the company.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Adtech/Martech - Lang.ai (San Francisco, Calif.), platform that helps CX Teams turn conversations into insights and automation: $10.5M A led by Nava Ventures, participation from Oceans Ventures, Forum, Flexport Fund, et al.
Biotech/Health - Nuvig Therapeutics (Redwood City, Calif.), therapies that induce mechanisms of immune homeostasis and treat autoimmune diseases: $47M A led by Novo Holdings A/S, Platanus, participation from Bristol Myers Squibb, Digitalis Ventures, Mission BioCapital.
- AcuityMD (U.S.), fully-remote MedTech software and data platform: $31M A led by Redpoint Venture Partners, participation from Benchmark, Ajax Health, Artisanal Ventures.
- Artax Biopharma (Cambridge, Mass.), T Cell-mediated disease treatment: $26M led by Eli Lilly and Company, Sound Bioventures, participation from Advent Life Sciences.
Blockchain - Solidus Labs (New York, N.Y.), risk monitoring firm for crypto assets: $45M A led by Liberty City Ventures, participation from Evolution Equity Partners, Declaration Partners.
Cybersecurity - StackHawk (Denver, Colo.), application security testing part of software delivery: $20.7M B led by Sapphire, Costanoa Ventures.
DevOps - Eridan (Mountain View, Calif.), efficiency platform for mobile networks: $46M from Capricorn Investment Group, Monta Vista Capital, Social Capital.
- Novu (Tel Aviv, Israel), open-source solution for notification infrastructure for developers: $6.6M Seed led by Crane Venture Partners, participation from Eniac, MXV Capital, Entrée Capital, Ariel Maislos.
Energy - SkySpecs (Ann Arbor, Mich.), monitoring platform for wind turbine health: $80M D led by Goldman Sachs, participation from NextEra, Statkraft Ventures, Huron River Ventures.
Enterprise - AcuityMD (Boston, Mass.), medical device sales platform: $31M led by Redpoint Venture Partners, participation from Benchmark.
- Tidio (Poland), CX chat platform that integrates with third-party services: $25M led by PeakSpan Capital, participation from Inovo Venture Partners, Rafał Brzoska.
- Voxel (San Francisco, Calif.), safety and operations platform for the workplace: $15M A led by Eclipse Ventures, participation from MTech, World Innovation Labs.
- MagaLoop (Berlin, Germany), digital B2B marketplace: $9.4M A led by Market One Capital, FoodLabs, participation from Redalpine Capital, Bitburger Ventures, et al.
Femtech - Mahmee (Los Angeles, Calif.), maternal healthcare: $9.2M A led by Growth Equity Business, Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
Fintech - Token.io (U.K.), account to account payments and accessing accounts for transactions by way of a single API: $40M led by Cota Capital, TempoCap, participation from Element Ventures, MissionOG, PostFinance, Octopus Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, SBI Investments.
- Cushion (San Francisco, Calif.), bank and credit card fee negotiation: $12M A led by Rose Park Advisors, participation from Flourish Ventures, Vestigo Ventures, TSEF, Green Cow Venture Capital, et al.
Metaverse - Lighthouse Labs (Montreal, Canada), metaverse navigation engine developer: $7M Seed led by Accel, BlockTower, Animoca Brands, participation from White Star Capital, Sparkle Ventures, et al.
Telecoms - Pharrowtech (Leuven, Belgium), mmWave radio frequency technology: $15.6M A led by Innovation Industries, participation from imec.xpand, Bloc Ventures, KBC Focus Fund.
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 |  | Inside VC's writer/curator Stephen currently lives in Berlin and is pursuing a Master's degree in philosophy. He otherwise spends his time trying his hand at recipes from India and Southeast Asia, escaping it all at the kickboxing gym, and offending aural sensibilities with his band. |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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