The Art of Corporate Venture

After a quarter of a century of healthcare investing, Barbara Dalton, senior managing partner of Pfizer Ventures, has won the Global Corporate Venturing Lifetime Achievement Award 2019.

Introduction to the GCV awards 2019 by James Mawson, editor in chief

A leading company in the e-signature and digital transaction management space, San Francisco-based DocuSign went public in April last year, with a market capitalization of $4.4bn.

Having emerged from the Merck Serono Entrepreneur Partnership Program (EPP) in 2015, Prexton Therapeutics raised a total $41m of funding before it was acquired by pharmaceutical firm Lundbeck for an estimated $1.1bn last year.

Maana recently won GCV’s inaugural award for energy-tech corporate venture capital (CVC) investment of the year, presented during its Venture Houston conference in November. Now, Maana has gone one-stage further and won the Sub-$50m Investment of the Year award across all industries.

In May last year, Severstal announced the launch of Severstal Ventures – a corporate venture fund that would invest directly as well as through other funds in advanced materials and associated technologies, in Russia and abroad.

Launched in July last year, Swisscom Digital Transformation Fund is Swisscom Ventures’ first investment vehicle that is open to third-party institutional investors.

Among the many news released by Salesforce Ventures last year, the unit announced in early December two new $100m funds in Canada and Japan, both aiming to boost startup innovation that is part of the global Salesforce ecosystem.

Having significantly increased its market share in the US in recent years, on-demand transportation company Lyft recently appointed JP Morgan to lead its planned initial public offering (IPO) with an estimated valuation of $15.1bn.

Currently valued at over $3bn, Katerra, which aims to revolutionise the construction sector with its technology, is said to be the most well-funded construction tech startup.

Additive manufacturing provider Desktop Metal raised a $160m round led by Koch Disruptive Technologies and featuring other corporate investors