Even as venture capital funds in Israel and around the world claim that the industry is in crisis, large funds continue to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Venrock, the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, yesterday closed its sixth fund at $350 million.
The Venrock VI Fund will invest in early-stage technology, healthcare, and energy companies.
Venrock partner Ohad Finkelstein is the fund's representative in Israel. He leads international investments for Venrock from offices in Europe and Israel. Most of Venrock's investments in Israel have been in software and telecommunications infrastructure companies. Investments in Israel and in companies with Israeli connections include Bhive Ltd., which was sold to VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) in 2008 for $67 million; P-cube, which was sold in 2004 for $200 million; web application firewall developer Imperva Inc., B2B market platform developer Bizo Inc., and Web 2.0 services developer Xconnect Ltd.
Venrock is one of the world's oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1969 in Silicon Valley. It currently manages $2.2 billion. Successful investments over the years include Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP), Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), 2Com Inc. (Nasdaq: COMS), Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC), and DoubleClick Inc. (acquired by Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG)).
Officially, Venrock has made $2.5 billion in investments in 442 companies over its 40-year history. 124 of the companies went on to hold IPOs, and 128 companies were acquired.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 7, 2010
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