IT

National Grid Partners and Sistema Asia Fund took part in the round, which increased the conversational software provider's valuation to about $130m.

Rajesh Swaminathan, head of Applied Ventures, spoke to GCV about his unit increasing its investment as it prepares to bring its New York engineering services facility online.

Ahren Innovation Capital, co-founded by eight Cambridge, UK, researchers, has reached its final close, having attracted limited partners including Unilever, Sky and Aviva.

SoftBank Vision Fund led a $200m round for Fungible, a data centre infrastructure technology developer already backed by Juniper Networks and Samsung Catalyst Fund.

Penn spinout Exyn Technologies has closed a $16m series A round backed by IP Group to accelerate the development of its AI software for drones.

Grab has so far raised $4.8bn series H round, after Invesco chipped in $300m in addition to the funding provided by corporate investors like SoftBank Vision Fund, Microsoft, Toyota, Ping An and others since June last year.

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

Redbee has launched Venturebees with a $630,000 investment to back fintech, insurtech, marketing and digital media startups in Argentina.

MS&AD Ventures participated in a $4.75m round for anti-phishing software startup Clearedin, which plans to invest the cash in recruitment.

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

Innogy Ventures led a second close for eSmaft System's latest round, which includes Equinor Energy Ventures and Kongsberg Digital, taking it to $34.4m.