Private equity firm Blackstone Inc. is reportedly in advanced talks to invest in growth-investment firm FTV Capital in return for a minority stake. The deal is yet to be finalized. Bloomberg reckons that Blackstone must be eyeing the passive stake to generate liquidity. More: - Last March, FTV secured $2.3B in commitments towards its seventh fund.
- FTV intends to write checks between $30M to $200M from the seventh fund.
- FTV intends to back enterprise technology, financial services, and payments startups with the seventh fund
- It had already backed ID.me, LoanPro, and ETF Securities.
Zoom out: - Other private equity firms have been increasing their commitments to other alternative asset managers to boost their liquidity in the past year.
- Apollo Global Management acquired a ~5% stake in New York-based alternative asset manager Diameter in October 2022.
- Last year, Blue Owl Capital acquired a minority stake in Lead Edge Capital.
- Earlier this month, Hunter Point Capital announced it would buy a stake in L Catterton.
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New York-based early-stage focused VC firm Tribeca Venture Partners launched a $200M second growth fund. The new fund will follow the investment strategy of its predecessor Access fund, writing smaller checks in equity recapitalization situations and down rounds. More: - Tribeca wrote individual checks worth $5M to $15M through the first Access fund, which closed at $45M in 2018, without taking a board seat.
- The first fund backed seven startups, including invoicing and payments startup HoneyBook, last valued at $2.45B in 2021.
- Access Fund I achieved an internal rate of return (IRR) of 55%, making it one of the top-performing funds with the vintage year 2018.
- With the new fund, the firm intends to back startups throughout the U.S. with at least $20M in annual revenue.
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European life sciences VC firm Sofinnova Partners held the first close of its digital medicine-focused fund at €150M ($162M). The new fund is backed by Apollo Global Management. Previously, Sofinnova invested 70% of its capital in European startups, with the remaining 30% globally. The new fund intends to continue with the same philosophy. More: - Sofinnova's partners, Edward Kliphuis and Simon Turner, will lead the new fund.
- The firm has already invested in three startups with the new fund.
- It led AI-powered digital health platform Kiro's €13.8M ($14.96M) Series A round, AI-powered radiology operating system deepcOS's €12M ($13.1M) Series A round, and drug-bacteria interaction platform BioCorteX's $5M seed round.
- Last May, Apollo committed to investing €1B ($1.08B) into Sofinnova's funds.
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Chinese commercial EV maker DeepWay raised $111.8M (770M yuan) in Series A+ funding. Incoming funds will enable DeepWay to commence mass manufacturing of smart heavy-duty electric trucks and back R&D efforts to further develop its products. More: - Chinese search engine firm Baidu and commercial logistics company Lionbridge established DeepWay through a joint venture in Jul. 2020.
- In August 2022, the firm nabbed $67M Series A, led by Qiming Venture Partners.
- Vlight Capital, CCB Trust, Lenovo Capital, and Incubator Group participated in the Series A round.
- Qiming participated in the current Series A+ round, which was led by Shandong Weiqiao Pioneering Group and SB China Venture Capital.
- DeepWay intends to start mass production of its autonomous-driving trucks by June 2023.
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Venti Technologies, an autonomous vehicle maker for the logistics and supply chain industry, secured $28.8M in Series A funding. Venti intends to use the proceeds to accelerate its growth and scale production to meet customers' demand. More: - LG Technology Ventures led the funding round with participation from Safar Partners, UOB Venture Management, Alpha JWC, and LDV Partners.
- Venti has been developing its self-driving technology for commercial vehicles at a port in Singapore.
- It expects to provide self-driving vehicles for ports, airports, warehouses, factories, and depots.
- CEO Heidi Wyle expects to deploy "dozens of self-driving vehicles" this year.
- Wyle added that the technology is "10,000 times simpler mathematically and computationally than downtown San Francisco" due to a lack of pedestrians and other human-driven vehicles.
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South Korean last-mile robotics startup Neubility closed its Series A round with $26M in funding. Neubility will use the incoming capital to expand its fleet of autonomous delivery robots, launch a new security robot, advance its robots-as-a-service platform, and increase its R&D team size. The firm was valued at $76.9M at the current round. More: - Neubility intends to increase its autonomous delivery robots count from 50 currently to 400 by the end of the year.
- The firm initially started as a haptic glove maker for video games before pivoting into autonomous mobility technology.
- Neubility uses V-SLAM instead of LiDAR cameras to give their robots a spatial understanding of the surrounding environment.
- CEO Sanmin Lee said that it manufactures its own hardware, which gives them an edge over its competitors.
- Samsung Venture Investment contributed $2.6M in the recent round.
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- Roy Banks, formerly a CEO at Weave, joined Pelion Venture Partners as a venture partner.
- New York-based fintech startup Spiral, which helps financial institutions with their sustainability, ESG, and CSR goals, raised $28M in Series A funding led by Team8.
- Payments technology and consumer engagement platform SKUx secured $11M in Series A funding led by Advection Growth Capital.
- Australian reforestation startup AirSeed Technologies is looking to raise $15M in Series A funding. The firm has tapped existing investor TWIYO for the investment.
- During the first two months of 2023, venture capital deal volume and deal value declined by 56.3% YoY and 80.8% YoY, respectively, in India.
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 |  | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | | | 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 and 1972 Fords. | |
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