Corporate venturers from the IT sector completed 191 exits between June 2021 and May 2022 – 125 acquisitions, 30 IPOs, four mergers of equals, six buyouts and 26 other transactions.
Corporate venturers from the IT sector completed 191 exits between June 2021 and May 2022 – 125 acquisitions, 30 initial public offerings (IPOs), four mergers of equals, six buyouts and 26 other transactions (including reverse mergers with special purpose acquisition vehicles). As for year-on-year, the transaction volume went up 76% from 112 to 197 between 2020 and 2021, while the estimated dollar value increased by 76% from $45.35bn up to $79.77bn.

Read the rest of the IT sector report
- Tech companies slow investment activities
- Deals in the IT sector
- Exits for IT sector investors
- New corporate IT sector funds
- Deals for university spinouts in the IT sector
- People moves

Krafton, a South Korea-based computer game publisher backed by Tencent, raised KRW4.3 trillion ($3.75bn) in its IPO. Krafton issued 8.65 million shares priced at the top of a revised KRW400,000 to KRW498,000 ($350 to $436) range, making it the second largest IPO held in the country to that date. The amount was about 25% smaller than the one disclosed earlier, after a regulator demanded the company amend its filings. Formed by video game producer Bluehole as a holding group in 2018, Krafton oversees subsidiaries including Bluehole Studio, PUBG Studio and Striking Distance Studios. It has sold some 70 million copies of its battle royale game, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

Japan-based consumer finance service Paidy agreed to be acquired by one of its shareholders, digital payment processor PayPal, for about $2.7bn. Paidy counts internet company CyberAgent among its previous corporate backers that also include Itochu, payment services providers Visa and PayPal itself. Founded in 2008, Paidy provides a buy-now-pay-later service that allows customers to make instant credit purchases that can be paid back on a monthly basis. PayPal will use the acquisition to strengthen its capabilities and presence in the domestic payments market in Japan.

Nu Holdings, the Brazil-based owner of neobank Nubank that counts Tencent and conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway as investors, secured $2.6bn in an IPO priced at the top of its range. The company issued 289 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange at $9 apiece, with Berkshire reportedly acquiring 10% of them. It is also issued depositary receipts on São Paulo’s B3 stock exchange in a concurrent offering. Founded in 2013, Nubank has built a digital banking app that provides services including bank accounts as well as debit and credit cards with competitive fees. It is the largest independent digital bank in the world, with more than 48 million users across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.

Primary care provider One Medical agreed to acquire Iora Health, a US-based peer backed by Alphabet, health insurer Humana and automotive and media group Cox Enterprises, in a $2.1bn all-share deal. The deal would give Iora’s shareholders a 26.1% stake in the merged business. One Medical floated in January 2020 in a $245m IPO, giving it a market capitalisation of approximately $1.7bn. Founded in 2010, Iora operates a network of 47 clinics offering healthcare to recipients on federal health insurance scheme Medicare, many of which are senior citizens. Its activities will complement One Medical’s customer base, most of which are privately insured.


US-based online trading platform developer Robinhood Markets floated in a $2.09bn IPO representing exits for Alphabet and entertainment agency Roc Nation. The company priced 55 million shares at the foot of the IPO’s $38 to $42 range. It issued nearly 52.4 million on the Nasdaq Global Select Market while the remaining shares were divested by co-founders Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt and chief financial officer Jason Warnick. Robinhood operates an online platform with over 17 million monthly active users who can use its Robinhood Financial marketplace to trade stocks and shares, and its Robinhood Crypto to do the same with digital currencies.

Semiconductor producer AMD agreed to acquire US-based edge computing technology provider Pensando in a $1.9bn deal allowing corporates Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Equinix, Alphabet, Ericsson, NetApp, Oracle, Liberty Global and Qualcomm to exit. Pensando has developed a distributed, programmable processor and software platform to help customers’ existing network architecture function more like cloud networks in order to support high-velocity applications. The company claims its technology yields eight to 13 times better performance than competitive products, and the purchase would help AMD compete with the likes of Nvidia and Intel’s data centre chip businesses.

Full Truck Alliance, a China-based trucking services platform developer, raised nearly $1.57bn in an IPO, which gave an exit to internet conglomerates SoftBank, Alphabet, Baidu and Tencent. The IPO was comprised of 82.5 million American Depositary Shares, each representing 20 ordinary shares, issued on the New York Stock Exchange. The shares were priced at the top of its $17 to $19 range. The price subsequently rose above $20 per share, giving the company a market capitalisation of over $21bn. Full Truck Alliance was formed in 2017 when freight booking services Huochebang and Yunmanman merged to form Full Truck Alliance, also known as Manbang Group. The company runs a digital freight platform that provides shippers with access to a network of some 2.8 million trucks, employing artificial intelligence to increase efficiency.

Bukalapak, the Indonesia-based online marketplace backed by multiple corporate investors including software provider Microsoft, priced its IPO at the top of its range and will raise $1.5bn. The share price valued the company at about $6bn, floating on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. Founded in 2010, Bukalapak operates an e-commerce platform with 6.5 million online sellers and 100 million users, and also runs a business-to-business procurement platform as well as a digital financial services subsidiary called Buka Investasi Bersama.

SentinelOne, a US-based cybersecurity technology producer backed by mobile chipmaker Qualcomm and consumer electronics manufacturer Samsung, raised more than $1.22bn in an upsized IPO. The offering consisted of 35 million shares issued on the New York Stock Exchange, increased from an initial allocation of 32 million, priced at $35.00 each, above its $31 to $32 range. The IPO price valued it at approximately $8.92bn. Founded in Israel, SentinelOne provides extended detection and response (XDR) services through a cybersecurity software platform that works across endpoints, containers, cloud workloads and connected devices.

Innovium, a US-based developer of data centre network infrastructure technology backed by Qualcomm, agreed to a $1.1bn acquisition by infrastructure semiconductor company Marvell. The all-stock transaction, consisting of just over 19 million shares. Innovium’s networking technology for data centres powers cloud and edge applications. Its Teralynx software and scalable switches can handle data transfer speeds of up to 25.6 terabits per second (Tbps) and offers low latency, and could cope with more than 100Tbps.
Global Corporate Venturing also reported several exits of emerging IT-related enterprises that involved corporate investors from the same as well as other sectors.


Customer engagement software developer Sinch agreed to acquire Australia-based mobile messaging platform developer MessageMedia in a $1.3bn transaction facilitating an exit for SoftBank. The deal consisted of $1.1bn in cash, with the remainder to be supplied in the form of 1.1 million new Sinch shares. It followed reports publicly listed Sinch had raised $1.1bn from investors including SoftBank and Singaporean state-owned investment firm Temasek. MessageMedia has built an online messaging platform that helps small and medium-sized businesses communicate and interact with their customers over mobile. It processes more than 5 billion mobile messages each year and is used by more than 60,000 customers.

US-based restaurant organisation technology provider Toast floated on the New York Stock Exchange in an $870m IPO representing an exit for Alphabet. The offering consisted of just over 21.7 million shares priced at $40.00 each, above a $34 to $36 range upgraded from $30 to $33 by the company. The IPO price gave it a valuation of about $20bn. Founded in 2011, Toast operates an online restaurant management platform that helps restaurants handle in-store and online orders as well as marketing, payroll and recruitment. The company secured a valuation of about $5bn through a private investment round of undisclosed size in February 2021.

Corporate investors SoftBank, Qualcomm, Alibaba, Suning and Dalian Wanda scored exits as China-based computer vision technology provider SenseTime floated in Hong Kong in a HK$6.64bn ($851m) IPO. The company sold 1.5 billion shares priced at the foot of the HK$3.85 to HK$3.99 range it set for the offering earlier and an extra 225 million through an over-allotment option. They closed at HK$4.13 ($0.53) on their first day of trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Founded in 2014, SenseTime produces artificial intelligence-equipped chips, sensors and software for use in image, facial and vehicle recognition, and its technology stems from Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Media Lab.

Confluent, a US-based data streaming software producer spun off by social network LinkedIn, went public in an $828m IPO on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. The offering consisted of 23 million class A shares priced at $36.00 each, above the IPO’s $28 to $33 range. The price valued the company a little over $9.1bn, twice the valuation at which it last raised venture funding, in April 2020. Founded in 2014, Confluent has built a cloud software platform which facilitates the streaming of data across an organisation from a range of sources in real time. It made a $323m net loss in 2020 from $237m in revenue.


Snowflake agreed to acquire Streamlit, a US-based data application software provider backed by Alphabet and media group Bloomberg, for $800m. Streamlit’s overall funding stood at $62m as of a $35m series B round in April 2021 led by Sequoia Capital and backed by Google’s Gradient Ventures fund and GGV Capital. Its earlier investors included Bloomberg-sponsored VC firm Bloomberg Beta, Elad Gil and Daniel Gross. Streamlit provides an open-source app framework used by data scientists to develop machine learning and data science applications. Its software has been downloaded nearly 2 million times and is used by companies such as consumer electronics producer Apple, carmaker Ford and ride hailing service Uber.

Retail group Schwarz Group purchased Israel-based cybersecurity technology provider XM Cyber in a deal sized at $700m, allowing stock exchange operator Nasdaq and IT services provider UST Global to exit. Founded in 2016, XM has developed an automated software platform that helps organisations to head off cyberattacks and proactively stop them by finding attack paths and closing them off before they compromise IT infrastructure. The company will continue to operate independently following the acquisition and will support Schwarz’s recently formed cloud software platform.

Content delivery network services provider Akamai Technologies agreed to buy Israel-based cybersecurity technology developer Guardicore for about $600m, providing exits for corporates Deutsche Telekom, Access Industries, computing technology producers Dell and Cisco. Founded in 2013, Guardicore operates an online security software platform that helps businesses to manage and protect data held in cloud-based, hybrid or traditional digital infrastructure. The company’s platform can also protect against and address ransomware attacks.