Vertex Venture Capital (Vertex), which is currently raising funds for its Vertex III Fund, announced today that Siemens Venture Capital (SVC) has joined the fund’s existing investors. Sources inform ''Globes'' that Vertex has to date raised $120 million out of the $150 million it aims to raise for the fund.
Vertex has already allocated funds for investment from the new Vertex III Fund, the most recent of which was the investment in Aternity, founded by Amnon Yacoby; Genoa Color Technologies and Press-Sense. According to the IVC Online information base, the investors in Vertex III Fund include Temasek Holdings which invested $30 million; Singapore Technologies, which invested $20 million; TIF Ventures which invested $5 million; Israel Discount Capital Markets and Investments, which invested $15 million; and the Gmulot pension fund.
Vertex is headquartered in Tel Aviv with representatives in Europe, USA, Singapore and Japan. It invests in Israeli and Israel-related high technology companies in the early stages of development in the areas of information networking, communications and subsystems, components, imaging, enterprise software, and other leading emerging technologies. Its recent successes include the sale of Siliquent to Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM) for $84 million and the flotation of PowerDsine (Nasdaq: PDSN) and Scopus Video Networks Ltd. (Nasdaq:SCOP). Vertex’s portfolio companies include Actimize, Dpharm, HyperRoll and others.
Siemens Venture Capital (SVC) is the €700 million corporate venture organization for Siemens AG (NYSE: SI, XETRA: SIE), one of the largest global electronics and engineering companies. To date, SVC has invested some €700 million in far more than 100 start-ups and 30 venture capital funds mainly in the U.S., Europe and Israel. 75% of the company’s portfolio companies and 50% of its venture capital funds are located in the US. SVC’s Israeli portfolio companies include FollowWap Telecommunications, Visuality Systems, and the funds in which it has invested include Star Ventures, Carmel Ventures, Portview Communications and Millennium Material Technologies Fund.
To date SVC has completed the following exits in Israel: the merger of BreezCom and Floware to form Alvarion (Nasdaq: ALVR; TASE: ALVR); the sale of Kagoor Networks to Juniper for $67 million; the sale of Blue Pumpkin to Witness Systems (Nasdaq: WITS) for $75 million; the issue of Radvision (Nasdaq: RVSN; TASE: RVSN) on Nasdaq; and the sale of TeleKnowledge to Mer Telemanagement Solutions (Nasdaq: MTSL) for $3 million. SVC wrote off its investment in Chiaro, which closed several months ago.
Siemens Venture Capital President and CEO Dr. Ralf Schnell said, “We are committed to Vertex because of the fund’s broad investment focus in information networking, enterprise software, and components. There is a great overlap with technologies Siemens is interested in. Vertex has a reputation of being a hands-on, value-adding early stage investor in its portfolio companies with an excellent network in Asia. We know that through close cooperation with Vertex we can increase our access to leading Israeli technology.”
Vertex Venture Capital Founder & Managing Partner Yoram Oron said, “We are pleased to welcome Siemens to our network of international leading investors. Vertex has many strategic partners, especially in Asia. Siemens is not only a financial investor, but a strategic one that fuels a win-win-win philosophy: our investors win, our portfolio companies win and Vertex wins.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on March 6, 2006