Sectors

With three investments already in the pocket, Klima is set to back a wide range of energy transition startups.

The Deutsche Telekom spinoff’s Growth Equity III Fund has completed a $300m first close backed by its former parent company as well as SoftBank.

DG Daiwa Ventures contributed to a $40m series B round for Yellow Card Financial while Vitol provided $37m in series C funding for VavaCars.

Novo Holdings led a $75m series C round for Kate Farms while PayU and InfoEdge Ventures participated in DotPe’s $58m series B.

Instead of buying Figma for $20bn Adobe might have been better served by expanding its CVC programme. A deal to take out one competitor is standard business practice but doesn’t fix Adobe’s burning platform.

Alphabet led a $1bn round for its life sciences unit, PTT bets on insect startup and corporate-backed Propzy is set to shut down.

Intuitive Surgical was part of Galvanize Therapeutics’ $100m series B round while Intel Capital participated in a $90m series C for Fortanix.

Job moves in the investment arms of telecoms companies over the past year, many of them involving rotation at SoftBank.

Telecoms investment funds had a boom in 2014-16 which has not been repeated since. But 2021 saw signs of an uptick with telcos in emerging markets creating investment funds.

Telefónica Ventures head of investments Pablo Moro tells Global Venturing Web3 and the metaverse are now among its priorities, with play-to-earn, tokenisation, VR and AR among the potential strategic areas.