Cardumen Capital, an Israeli-European venture capital and private equity firm founded by former employees at Samsung Ventures, announced today that it had completed a $60 million financing round for its first venture capital fund. The fund will be managed by former Samsung Ventures Israel manager Gonzalo Martinez de Azagra and investment manager Roy Gottlieb. The fund plans to invest in early-stage technological ventures developing deep technology (innovative and breakthrough technology) for enterprise customers.
Cardumen's chairman is Gil Gidron, and Spanish venture capitalist Igor de la Sota is co-CEO. Cardumen also invests in the European clean energy market, and the fund says that it will utilize its ties with energy and financial corporations and industrial companies to help its portfolio companies grow.
The new fund has offices in Israel and Spain, but will invest exclusively in Israeli ventures. The find will focus on investments in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, Internet of Things, software infrastructure, and big data - sectors in which Gottlieb and Martinez de Azagra invested when they were at Samsung Ventures.
The fund has invested in seven companies to date, five of which have been reported: CoreTigo, Binaris, MultiVu, SecondNature, and Humavox. The fund's investments average $1.5 million per company, but run as high as $3 million. Cardumen's announcement states that it wants to invest in at least ten companies. Half of the fund's capital is designated for follow-on investments.
Among the investors in Cardumen are Spanish oil corporation Repsol and Spanish bank Banco Sabadell, as well as other corporations, financial institutions, and private individuals, most of them from Europe and Latin America.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 12, 2020
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