Consumer

Employees of Juul Labs are resisting a deal with Altria, which is also holding talks with cannabis producer Cronos, that would value the vaping product supplier at approximately $30bn.

Danone unit Manifesto Ventures has participated in a $28.5m round for Agricool, which grows strawberries in containers, and which plans to now hire 200 more staff members.

Synthetic silk developer Spiber, backed by Godwin and Dai-ichi Life, has now raised a total of more than $260m.

Cornes has pumped more cash into Bristol's haptics technology spinout Ultrahaptics to take its total to $84.3m.

Collaboration platform for the construction industry PlanGrid was acquired by software developer Autodesk for $875m.

Educational toy maker Tech Will Save Us has closed a $6.7m series A round to fuel its European expansion, after M&C Saatchi had supported a first close in March this year.

Each Friday the Global Corporate Venturing Deal Net rounds up the week’s smaller deals and tracks the emerging companies accessing corporate funds.

Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings and Niantic have joined a series C round for DigiLens that stood at $25m as of May this year and already included Continental.

Tobacco maker Altria is said to be seeking an expanded footprint in the e-cigarette market through a proposed investment in Juul.

Two large and important deals above the $1bn mark in the e-commerce and e-retail space in East Asia appeared in the news last week. Both deals involved telecoms group SoftBank as a corporate backer.