Industrial

Seed investor Toyota AI Ventures returned to help the intelligent forklift developer close a series A round led by Innovation Endeavors.

A Xiaomi industrial fund was among the investors in series B and B-plus rounds for the smart manufacturing technology provider that totalled an eight-digit dollar amount.

The agricultural product and services provider added $100m to a FedEx-backed round that reportedly values it at $3.5bn.

The merchant group’s LDC Innovations fund will back food and agtech startups, with Max Clegg, its former head of food innovation, heading up the unit.

One vaccine developer, CureVac, has received a generous backing from Germany’s government-owned development bank KfW, while another – Vaxcyte – went public raising $250m.

Fosun was among the participants in an eight-figure round for new materials producer Mingxun Hi-Tech Material that will support product development.

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

Gradient Ventures and Prologis Ventures both contributed to a round that will fund research and development for the logistics management platform developer.

The demographic phenomenon of ageing populations will present challenges to both developed and developing nations. Along with the challenges come opportunities, however, and corporate venture capitalists may be a particularly well-positioned group to help with them, as it is the connecting tissue between the world of incumbent corporate industry leaders and the space of disruptive innovation.

Toyota AI Ventures, Micron Ventures, Hella Ventures and Presidio Ventures have all invested in the video analytics system developer.

Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.