Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of June 7, 2021. Alation Raised $110M Series D

Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures famously once said that corporate venture is dumb and he thinks corporations should BUY companies instead. Why would a corporate venture waste money being a minority investor in something they don’t control?

Dumb or not... Corporate venture capital backed funding reached $73.1B with over 1500 deals in 2020 despite COVID-19, an increase of 24% from 2019.  And more and more corporate VCs are not leading deals focusing on areas such as AI, cybersecurity, CPG, fintech, digital health and advanced manufacturing. 



Some of the most active and in my opinion the smartest corporate VCs are:

• GV (Google Ventures) 
• M12 (Microsoft) 
• Qualcomm Ventures 
• Samsung Ventures
• Salesforce Ventures 
• Intel Capital  
• Alibaba 
• Tencent 
• Slack Fund
• DTCP (Deutsche Telekom)
• SBI Investments
• Citi Ventures
• AXA Ventures Partners
• Goldman Sachs 
• Comcast Ventures 

On June 14, I am hosting a very astute corporate VC, Ray Liao, VP, Managing Director Ventures, Samsung Next for a conversation at FoundersHK Capital Conversation.  Join us.

This week a total of 18 startups raised $538.7M in funding, 5 exitss:

• $204.7M goes to 7 Enterprise startups
• $135M goes to 3 FinTech startups
• $10M goes to 1 InsurTech startup
• $39M goes to 3 Healthcare startups
• $50M goes to 1 BioTech startup
• $35M goes to 2 FoodTech startups
• $65M goes to 1 Aerospace startup