Services

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

Tal Education Group, which contributed to Minerva’s series B round five years ago, has returned for a series C led by Bytedance.

Dentsu was among the backers of a $20m series E round for NewsCred, which has now raised more than $100m from investors also including Verizon and Digital First Media.

Fidelity International has provided more than $11m to the skills trading platform operator backed by Sumitomo Mitsui, Nippon Life and Voyage Group.

Singapore Post-backed logistics network operator Rivigo has increased its series E round to $65m following a second close co-led by Warburg Pincus and SAIF Partners.

VTC Innovation Fund contributed to a series B round for weather forecasting satellite constellation developer PlanetIQ, with the cash set to help it launch 20 microsatellites by 2021.

Tencent and Naspers-backed education platform Byju’s is targeting an expansion into the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand following the $150m funding round.

GV-backed marketing platform Signpost has added $52m to its coffers following a series D round, bringing its total funding to more than $87m.

Analysis: Q2 2019

The latest note by data provider PitchBook found that, in the context of growth in corporate venture capital, the most active CVC arms it examines have shown a strong historical performance and corporate-backed portfolio companies have reaped benefits in the form of higher exit chances and lower bankruptcy rates

Innovative region: Switzerland