Climate investor Bay Bridge Ventures is raising a new $200 million fund, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Bay Bridge filed paperwork Monday for the new climate fund with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
And Congruent Ventures raised a $275 million fund in 2023, turning down $325 million in additional LP interest.
Bay Bridge Ventures is new, having been founded in 2022 with a focus on ESG more broadly and sustainability in particular.
Still, that doesn’t mean Bay Bridge lacks experience.
Jio Financial and BlackRock to tap India’s wealth management and stock broking marketJio Financial Services, part of the Indian conglomerate Reliance, is forming a joint venture with U.S. asset manager BlackRock to set up a wealth management and stock broking business in India, the two firms said Monday.
The announcement follows BlackRock and Jio Financial launching a joint venture last year to offer asset management services in India.
The two companies plan to invest $150 million each in the joint venture, they said last year.
The expansion of BlackRock and Jio Financial’s partnership underscores Reliance’s growing ambitions in the financial services sector.
Since its public debut in August, Jio Financial Services has already expanded to insurance and lending businesses.
Cendana, Kline Hill have a fresh $105M to buy stakes in seed VC funds from LPs looking to sellIf you ask investors to name the biggest challenge for venture capital today, you’ll likely get a near-unanimous answer: lack of liquidity.
Cash-hungry venture investors, whether VCs themselves or their limited partners are increasingly looking to sell their illiquid positions to secondary buyers.
“We simply passed the hat around to our existing LPS at Kline Hill and Cendana,” said Kim.
It then passes these opportunities to Kline Hill, which values, underwrites and negotiates the transaction price.
Traditional secondary investors, such as Lexington Partners and Blackstone, recently raised their largest secondary funds ever.
Ah, spring has sprung here in the Northeast United States, and it’s not only flowers that are blooming.
Today on Equity’s startup-focused Wednesday show, we dug into the Multiverse-Searchlight deal, which reminded us of the Wonderschool-Early Day transaction that we covered on the show a few weeks ago.
Startup Land is feeling quite busy and high-dollar again, and that’s a lot of fun!
We wrapped up the show with a cool discussion of this new venture capital fund that’s targeting growth-rounds in Africa.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Metalab goes from quietly building the internet to investing in itNearly 20 years after finding success in helping startups build products, Canadian interface design firm Metalab launches Metalab Ventures to invest in many of those product-led startups.
Then Metalab “lets them loose” to grow, CEO Luke Des Cotes told TechCrunch.
With Metalab Ventures, the venture arm will play the role of a long-term value investor, essentially “putting our money where our mouth is,” Des Cotes said.
When determining who to invest in Metalab Ventures, the process includes getting to know the founders and if the firm can add value.
“We’ve already operated very much like a venture fund,” Des Cotes said.
Avendus, India’s leading investment bank for venture deals, is looking to raise about $300 million for its private equity unit, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
With its third private equity fund, Avendus plans to write larger checks more frequently, one of the sources said.
The firm raised its second fund, amounting to around $185 million, in 2021.
Avendus employs over 150 bankers and was the top financial advisor in India last year.
In the past decade, similar to financial advisors in other regions, Avendus has diversified its offerings, venturing into wealth management, credit financing, and private equity.
EarliTec Diagnostics just raised fresh capital to expand its system that helps clinicians diagnose children as young as 16 months old.
According to EarliTec, children with autism won’t focus on the video the same way that kids without autism will.
The Autism Impact Fund closed a $60 million fund, 20% higher than its $50 million target, this week.
Divergent Ventures raised a $10 million fund in 2021 that focuses on early-stage companies across the neurodiversity space.
Opya, a digital therapy platform for autism, has raised more than $19 million from backers including SoftBank’s Open Opportunity Fund.
What a week, everyone.
Two full days of Y Combinator demo day activity kept us busy, but the latest accelerator cohort’s launch was far from the only big story in startup-land.
Then to close out, we chatted through the impending Ibotta and Rubrik IPOs.
The latter deal could provide a fascinating heat-check for unprofitable unicorns that need to find some sort of exit, and quickly.
All told we chatted through startups from their very earliest form all the way through their most mature.
But it’s unlikely that startups’ fundraising slog will become much easier soon, mostly because of venture capitalists’ own capital-gathering challenges.
In Q1, U.S. VC funds raised only $9.3 billion, according to PitchBook data.
At this pace, VC fundraising will end 2024 at just above $37 billion, the lowest capital raised since 2013 and a 54% decline from last year.
PitchBook estimates that dry powder, the amount of capital VCs still have to invest from previous funds, remains high.
“One low fundraising quarter is not going to make or break the future of VC,” said Kyle Stanford, lead venture capital analyst at PitchBook.
Venture firm Maniv has grown by nearly every measure since it launched eight years ago in Israel — from its investor base and 40-startup portfolio to its geographic focus, footprint and fund size.
There are, however, some notable evolutions that hint at the Maniv’s investment strategy with its third and latest fund known as Maniv III, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Maniv, once firmly focused on Israeli startups, continues to expand its geographic focus and now has active portfolio companies in nine countries.
The VC firm has also largely stopped using the once trendy umbrella term “mobility,” (often leaving it out of its original name Maniv Mobility) and has opted instead to talk about deep tech, decarbonization and digitization of the transportation sector.
“I thought the trajectory of that term (mobility) was going to continue to clarify overtime, but in fact, I think the opposite has happened for a bunch of reasons,” Granoff explained, adding that while the term mobility might not be used as often, it is still very much central to its mission.
