Financial

China has a policy of superclusters to drive growth and is increasingly incorporating corporate venture capital initiatives into these clusters.

Rakuten-backed Base Food is set to list on TSE’s Growth Market in an IPO valuing it at $329m while Mitsui was part of a $400m round for Yellow Door Energy.

Consumer credit provider FinAccel secured $140m from investors including GMO Payment Gateway while Amgen helped brain disease drug developer Neumora raise $112m.

Salesforce, ANZ and Tencent helped Airwallex boost its series E round to $300m while Hermes-Epitek chipped into a $30m series A for Ochre Bio.

The value of corporate-backed deals slumped in the third quarter, but sectors like energy and telecoms bucked the trend as did a few geographies like Israel.

BBC Studios bought portfolio company Firebird Pictures while SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led a nine-figure round for dental product maker SprintRay.

Such enormous losses help explain why Bytedance in January said it was dissolving its corporate venturing unit.

An overwhelming majority of respondents in our poll said they took board seats — mainly to influence and help the startups in their portfolio.

Prologis Ventures and GV helped supply chain analytics provider Altana raise $100m while Amazon and BHP were among the investors in an $85m round for clean steel technology developer Electra.

Q2 Holdings has acquired National Bank of Canada and OpenText-backed Sensibill while ArcelorMittal's XCarb unit was part of Form Energy’s $450m series E round.

MassMutual's diversity-focused fund-of-funds has been granted an extra $100m, bringing the amount it has invested in CVC activities to $900m.