Hitachi Ventures secured $ 400 million for a fourth fund, the company told TechCrunch exclusively.
The size of the new fund is a vote of confidence in a series of deep technologically vertically. The corporate VC portfolio mimics that of its limited partner, including energy, construction, biotechnology and AI.
“We are open to other discovery opportunities,” said CEO and CEO Stefan Gabriel. “There is a lot about quantum, nuclear, science of life, space technology. It’s not very wide – we have a clear picture of what excites us in these areas.”
Hitachi Ventures He will continue to focus on the investment of the A. “This is still the sweet spot,” said partner Gayathri Radhakrishnan. Its first investments in a company will have an average of about $ 5 million and the fund holds about 55% of its capital for surveillance opportunities, said partner and CFO Wolfgang Seibold.
Although it is named after the Japanese group, the Munich -based Hitachi Ventures is a piece of an excerpt in the corporate VC World. It is more structured as a typical business fund, Gabriel said, with Hitachi serving as Solo LP. The investment committee consists of the company’s partners and does not need to make possible investments after its corporate subsidiary, said Pete Bastien, a partner and president of the company’s US businesses.
But the fund is still working closely with Hitachi, he added, partly to help portfolio companies understand what a potential future customer is looking for. Like other CVCs, Hitachi Ventures does not promise to land bids for portfolio companies, but can make basic imports.
“We can put you in front of Hitachi, but your product must sell itself,” Radhakrishnan said.
And like other CVCs, Hitachi Ventures serves as a detector, Radhakrishnan said, cleaning the stadiums to find smaller companies and technologies that suit her corporate partner businesses.
The previous investment of Hitachi Ventures cover a series of verticals. On the energy side, it has invested in Ascend Battery Recycling, Fusion Startup Thea Energy and Wase, sewage company for energy. AI investments tend to implement applications in the workplace, including EMA, which focuses on business work flows. Strikeready, which covers cyber security. and makersite, which uses AI to improve supply chains.
