F-Prime Capital's latest State of Robotics report shows that VCs invested $90B into robotics startups over the last five years, representing ~10% of the total VC investment in technology. Sanjay Aggarwal, a venture partner at F-Prime Capital, said, "The emergence of autonomous vehicles has been the catalyst for a new generation of engineers and entrepreneurs who are building the next generation of robotics companies, which are solving real-world problems." More: - Organizations across the U.S., Europe, and Israel raked in 70% of the overall investment.
- Over the past five years, M&A transactions generated over $20B in value.
- The report estimates the unrealized value of private unicorns to be over $100B.
- Investments in vertical robotics increased from $6.0B in 2021 to $6.9B in 2022.
- Despite the venture funding pullback and macroeconomic headwinds, F-Prime is confident about the sector's prospects, especially as VCs are optimistic about the early-stage investment opportunities.
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What the numbers say: WeWork's stock was trading around $0.47 per share on Monday. As the firm's stock has been trading below the $1 per share mark for a long time, it is now at risk of being delisted from the NYSE. WeWork's current stock prices give it a market capitalization of $345.7M. Since its listing, the firm has lost $46.7B in value over the last four years, down from its peak of $47B in 2019. WeWork was valued at $9B when it went public through a SPAC merger in 2021. What happened: The poor stock performance of WeWork has deepened losses at VC firms that still own equity stakes in the firm. VC firms SoftBank, Benchmark, and Insight Partners own 62%, 3%, and 2% stakes in WeWork, respectively. WeWork's falling stock prices have resulted in significant losses at SoftBank, the single largest shareholder with 461.5 million shares. Where to see the impact: SoftBank Group has faced losses for four straight quarters in 2022, ending the year with a $5.8B loss across its Vision Funds and Latin American fund in the last quarter alone. By the end of Q4 2022, SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 had reportedly lost $17.6B throughout the year. The Japanese bank has allegedly lost more than $5.1B in WeWork. In a bid to recoup losses, SoftBank diluted its ownership in Alibaba to 3.8% and liquidated shares worth $7.2B earlier this year.
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San Francisco-based endpoint security startup Lookout sold its consumer mobile security division to Finnish IT security firm F-Secure for $223M (€202M). The acquisition will nearly triple F-Secure's presence in the U.S. and expand its consumer security products suite. F-Secure expects the deal to produce annual revenue synergies of $13.2M (€12M). More: - F-Secure plans to leverage Lookout's technologies to solidify its market dominance in the global communication service provider segment.
- Meanwhile, Lookout will use the proceeds to transition into a "pure-play enterprise company," focussing on mobile endpoint security and cloud security.
- Per Crunchbase, Lookout has raised over $432M in total funding to date.
- T.Rowe Price Associates led a $150M Series F round in mid-2014.
- Lookout is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Greylock, Morgan Stanley, and Jeff Bezos.
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Andreessen Horowitz led a $100M Series B funding round into AI vector database startup Pinecone. The New York-based firm was valued at $750M at the current fundraiser, more than four times its previous valuation of $168M from its Series A round a year ago. Pinecone will back R&D efforts, grow its team size, and scale the organization with the proceeds from the funding round. More: - Before the current round, Pinecone had raised $28M in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures in February 2022 and $10M in seed funding led by Wing Venture Capital in January 2021.
- Existing backers Menlo Ventures and Wing Venture Capital participated in the recent funding round, joined by new investor ICONIQ Growth.
- Pinecone provides a vector database that serves as a core component of AI models and AI-powered applications.
- The firm's notable clients include Shopify, Hubspot, Zapier, and Gong.
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Tulsa, Oklahoma-based VC firm Atento Capital launched a new $100M fund to back early-stage tech startups. The fund aims to invest in line with its aim to "drive inclusive development for historically underinvested people, places, and ideas." Individual ticket sizes will range between $250,000 to $3M, averaging $1M. More: - From the newly launched fund, $20M is earmarked for pre-seed investments, with the remaining $80M for early-stage and fund-of-fund investments.
- Atento Capital claims to have invested 48% of its $128M committed capital since 2020 into underinvested founders and GPs.
- Per Fortune, the firm has invested in 49 startups and 24 other VC funds to date.
- Atento has backed funds raised by emerging general partners at Forum Ventures and Visible Hands.
- The firm recently led funding rounds into computer vision platform RobbieAI and remote therapeutic management platform PatchRx.
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Italian energy storage solutions startup Energy Dome closed its Series B round with $44M (€40M) in funding. The firm, which has developed a "CO2 Battery" for storing renewable energy, intends to use the proceeds to commercialize its technology. It expects to have two 200 MWh frames operational by the end of 2024. More: - Italian energy company Eni's corporate VC arm Eni Next and Intesa Sanpaolo bank's VC division Neva SGR co-led the funding round.
- Barclays' Sustainable Impact Capital, CDP Venture Capital, Invitalia, Novum Capital Partners, 360 Capital, Japan Energy Fund, and Elemental Excelerator participated in the round.
- The firm has raised $59.5M (€54M) in total funding to date.
- Energy Dome claims it has "a qualified pipeline that exceeds 9 GWh" from power producers and corporations across the U.S., Europe, South America, India, and Australia.
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- Private investment firm Natural Capital secured $80M in capital commitments for its second fund, per SEC filings seen by Talk Business. The firm intends to invest in startups in North Arkansas.
- Japanese VC firm GLOBIS Capital Partners secured $543M in capital commitments towards its Fund VII at the final close.
- British VC firm Midven successfully exited its investments from Sign Solutions and Natural HR with a "healthy return."
- Qiming Venture Partners' portfolio startup MedSci Healthcare successfully completed its IPO listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
- VC deployed $172.8M into Irish startups in Q1 2023, down 57% YoY from $401M invested in the same time last year.
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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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