Venture capital firm Grove Ventures has announced the final closing of its Grove Ventures II fund, with total commitments of $120 million. The fund is intended for investment in early-stage Israeli companies developing "deep technology". The firm has not disclosed the identities of its investors.
Grove Ventures was founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneur Dov Moran, inventor of the Disk-on-Key, and an angel investor. In 2006, Moran sold M-Systems, which he founded, to SanDisk for $1.6 billion. The firm takes pride in the diversity of its team, in which there are secular and religious Jews as well as an Israeli Arab, and half of which are women, although there is only one woman among its four partners.
Besides Moran, the partners are Sigalit Klimovsky, who has experience in senior roles both in large corporations and in startup companies; Lotan Levkowitz, an expert in industrial Internet of Things (IoT), and formerly manager of Moran's private investments; and Omri Green, who has experience in management of engineering and sales teams, and has who has taken on the role of general partner with the raising of the new fund.
Grove II is intended to be a continuation of Grove's first fund, which amounted to $110 million and which since 2016 has invested in eleven known companies and six more whose identities have not been disclosed. The fund invests between $500,000 and $5 million in each company. Grove II has already invested in two companies; the identities of these too have not been disclosed.
Grove has made follow-on investments in most of its portfolio companies, which have also received finance from giant companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Alibaba, Samsung, and Intel. There is a preponderance of semiconductor companies in the portfolio, among them Wiliot, TriEye, 3DSignals, and NeuroBlade.
"The new fund will enable us to continue to find the best entrepreneurs in Israel," Moran is quoted as saying in Grove's announcement. "Our main focus is on companies dealing in a range of fields on the brink of a digital revolution. We will help them to maximize their business potential within a short time. We deliberately choose to invest outside the mainstream in deep technology in order to help to build the giant companies of tomorrow."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 18, 2020
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