Telecoms

As the month of August draws to a close, last week we reported several initial public offerings (IPOs) which are lined up for the coming weeks along with some notable ones that have already taken place.

Bill Gates has returned to lead an $85m round for satellite internet provider Kymeta, which has now raised more than $280m from investors including Intelsat and Liberty Global.

Juniper Networks has exited wireless communications technology developer Fastback in a $14m acquisition that follows at least $55m in funding.

US-based business finance provider Kabbage, which has a host of corporates as backers, will be acquired by payment processing firm American Express.

Telkom Indonesia's latest fund will invest up to $30m in domestic digital technology developers that will be able to connect to other state-owned corporations.

Amid the covid-19 pandemic, interest in life sciences is now perhaps at its highest. This is true in corporate venture capital and three of the multimillion-dollar stories we reported in mid-August corroborate this.

Google, Qualcomm and Nokia have supplied funding for HMD, which owns the licence to manufacture smartphones and feature phones under the Nokia brand.

The number of corporate-backed companies going public declined in 2019, despite some major IPOs like those of Uber, Lyft and Slack.

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

Telecom Italia is putting up about $70m for a growth-stage fund with a $175m targeted close that will be managed by VC firm United Ventures.

Over the past four quarters, almost one of every four corporate investors seems to be new, even in lockdown.