Croatia-based Rimac Group raised $536M (€500M) in fresh Series D capital led by Softbank Vision Fund 2 and Goldman Sachs. Porsche was also involved in the round, which valued the EV company at $2.2B. More: - Porsche’s total investment so far into the Croatian carmaker has given it a 20% stake.
- Rimac also has investment from Hyundai, but the company stresses its independence from big automakers.
- Founder and CEO Mate Rimac will remain the Rimac Group’s largest shareholder, as well as the majority shareholder in the recently merged Bugatti Rimac and the sole shareholder of Rimac Technology.
- The company began by proposing to develop the Rimac Nevera hypercar, which costs $2.5M and claims acceleration from 0 to 60 mph in 1.85 seconds, a record for any produced vehicle.
- That endeavor is now part of the merged division with Bugatti.
- Rimac Group will pivot the rest of its business to becoming a global EV components supplier.
- Today’s funding will go a long way to that goal: Rimac plans to build a $200M campus in its Zagreb, Croatia, headquarters to develop and produce batteries, software, and other components.
- Construction on the 25-acre campus began in August, and Rimac plans to have it open by 2023.
- Beyond that plan, the company is seeking to hire 700 employees in 2022, nearly doubling its current workforce.
- It will also open new offices and factories across Europe, including in Germany, England, and possibly Italy.
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 Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of the tech multinational, was involved in 31 deals in 2021 with a total value of $2.7B. So far in 2022, the firm has already signed 11 term sheets, albeit with a much lower total price tag of $318M. In March, it announced a new $100M Snapdragon Metaverse Fund to expand beyond technologies that its parent company produces. More: - Founded in 2000, the firm currently boasts a $2B global venture investment portfolio of more than 150 companies and is nearing a milestone of 500 total investments to date.
- Qualcomm is known as a semiconductor producer, but its venture arm has taken 5G, AI, automotive, IoT, and connectivity tech into its sights in recent years.
- Its focus at this point is AI, particularly as more companies use AI processes in edge devices, and metaverse, which will require heavy investment in chips to fulfill its promise.
- Investing out of an evergreen fund, as is typical for corporate VC arms, Qualcomm has $150M to $200M per year at its disposal.
- It deploys anywhere from institutional seed rounds to Series A, B, C, and beyond. Initial investments range from $1M to $10M.
- Since being founded, it has clinched 122 exits, of which 17 came from IPOs.
- Big M&A deals include Microsoft’s $1.9B acquisition of edge device platform Pensando and Microsoft’s $1.35B deal to buy 5G software maker Affirmed Networks.
- Its unicorn portfolio totals 22 and is headed by Magic Leap, which has raised $3.5B. Chinese e-commerce platform Yidao Yongche is in distant second place with $790M in total funding.
- Since 2018, Qualcomm has mostly targeted the U.S. for investments (60) but also looked to China (21) and India (16) for opportunities.
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VCs' rising pay rate is tempting fate, writes Shuli Ren in Bloomberg's opinion section. The median cash pay, including base salaries and bonuses, for VC partners rose 10% to $928,000, reported The Information. Even associates, typically a few years out of college, earned a median salary and bonus of $196,000 last year More: - The big shift came thanks to the massive quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve in the last two years, which has resulted in more capital looking for a home.
- As such, VCs have increased their successive fund sizes 80% of the time, with a median step-up of 60.9%.
- That means that, while carry from exits can still make a large portion of a partner's paycheck, the intake merely from management fees has grown substantially.
- The rapid growth in fees charged has led the SEC to introduce plans to enforce greater transparency in fee structure for private-market funds.
- In addition to the standard 2% yearly fee, many firms tack on charges for travel related to deal sourcing, hosting annual investor meetings, or even legal expenses to fulfill regulatory requirements.
- While VC at large could claim 30.5% returns and justify its high costs, that will change when stock market losses lead to markdowns.
- While LPs have long tolerated the fees charged for reliable returns, the question is whether they will be so magnanimous when the downturn begins to be felt.
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Glilot Capital Partners has led a $26M Series A round in Israeli cybersecurity outfit Seemplicity via early growth fund Glilot+. NTTVC and Atlantic Bridge and previous backers S Capital and Rain Capital also participated. S Capital also led Seemplicity’s $6M seed round. More: - Seemplicity starts with a fairly straightforward proposition: It wants to simplify DevOps and SecOps teams’ ability to get a complete picture of the state of an organization’s security.
- The company is thereby responding to the proliferation of tools required to combat the increased number of security breaches stemming from firms requiring more services in the cloud, more digital operations, and more devices.
- Having just exited stealth mode, the company’s founders, Ravid Circus (CPO), Yoran Sirkis (CEO), and Rotem Cohen Gadol (CTO), revealed that they already clinched 20 clients covering Fortune 500 and publicly traded companies in a variety of sectors.
- Given that the expansion of vulnerable tech has grown most quickly in larger organizations, Seemplicity’s customers tend to have 20,000 employees and as many as 15 or 20 DevOps and SecOps teams with multiple security programs.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Adtech/Martech - Vibenomics (Indianapolis, Ind.), premier retail audio advertising provider: $12.3M B led by Panoramic Ventures.
Biotech/Health - Minoryx (Barcelona, Spain), treatments for orphan central nervous system disorders: $54.6M C from Columbus Venture Partners, Caixa Capital, Columbus Venture Partners, et al.
- Air Doctor (Jerusalem, Israel), healthcare platform for travelers: ...
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Quick Hits - 64% of companies used this channel to generate nearly half of their revenue — and it's not paid ads or content.*
- Paddle, a London-based payments infrastructure provider for SaaS companies, acquired ProfitWell, a Boston-based subscription metrics and retention automation software company, for over $200M.
- Hannah Grey, a VC outfit focusing on pre-seed and seed rounds in companies that use macro-societal shifts to discover opportunities, raised its maiden fund at $51.6M. The firm, run by Kate Beardsley and Jessica Peltz-Zatulove, initially sought a $25M debut vehicle.
- France-based Alven has raised a new $375M (€350M) fund to boost its AUM to $2.14B. Operating since 2000, the firm has had 70 exits and has expanded its purview beyond the francophile world to the rest of Europe and the U.S.
- Sydney Thomas, seed-stage Precursor Ventures' first hire, has departed to start her own solo-partner firm. While she acknowledges the difficulty of raising a fund as an emerging manager right now, she asserts that early-stage investments have little to do with the stock market. Further details about the firm were not disclosed.
- Financial institutions are leaving workers behind. Find out if you're one of them.*
*This is a sponsored post
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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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