Pitango Venture Capital today announced the launch of its seventh fund, Pitango Venture Capital 7. The Israeli fund, which has $175 million under management, is investing in young companies at very early stages, including at the Seed Stage.
The new fund will work alongside Pitango’s first Growth Fund, which focuses on late-stage companies. This latest move brings Pitango’s recent capital raising to a total of $400 million in both funds and Pitango now has more than $2 billion under management. Pitango's new fund focuses on IT and Life Science investments, specializing in Enterprise Infrastructure, IoT, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Health.
Rami Beracha, Eyal Niv and Ittai Harel lead Pitango’s investments in young companies.
Pitango managing general partner Rami Beracha said, "Launching Pitango Venture Capital 7 is a part of Pitango’s new investment strategy - working in small, highly-focused investment teams, using two parallel investment vehicles - a Venture Fund and a Growth Fund. This strategy gives us the flexibility needed in today’s entrepreneurial world for initial investments in the early stages and leading large rounds in later stages."
Pitango Venture Capital 7’s first investment is in Graphcore, a British developer and manufacturer of an intelligent processing unit for Machine Learning, as part of a $32 million investment round, with Bosch VC, Foundation Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, Samsung’s investment arm and other leading technology companies.
Pitango managing general partner Eyal Niv said, "I believe we are on the verge of a new era in which Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence will gain momentum and impact every aspect of our lives. Smart IT Infrastructure, personalized medicine, autonomous transportation and robotics and accurate business forecasts are just some of the areas that will be transformed and improved beyond recognition. I firmly believe that the Artificial Intelligence technology will bring about the greatest transformation, greater than the change brought about by the Internet, mobile phones and social media."
Pitango managing general partner Ittai Harel, who heads the Life Sciences sector, said: "Innovative companies in Healthcare, with a focus on Medical Devices, Digital Health, and Mobile Health, will be the main target of the fund’s new investments. The global healthcare industry is undergoing massive transformation, and we see great potential in merging Israel’s leading technological capabilities with its clinical and medical capabilities, to develop a new generation of highly promising companies.”
As part of Pitango’s mission statement to invest in the next generation of Israel’s top technology and in exceptional entrepreneurs as early as the seed and pre-seed stages, and in close cooperation with strategic investors, Pitango has established two seed investment platforms for the fields of IoT and Digital Medicine:
MindUp, a Haifa based incubator supported by the Chief Scientist, focuses on Big Data and Predictive Analytics, Telemedicine, Cloud Computing, Wearable and Embedded Monitoring Sensors, Advanced Diagnostics, Personalized Healthcare, IT Systems for hospitals and applications and technologies for improving and streamlining medical procedures. The incubator was established in partnership with the technology giants Medtronic (Medical devices) and IBM (developer of Watson Health), Rambam Medical Center and Impact First, Israel’s first social tech investment fund.
Pitango has also established an investment platform named i3 Equity Partners, which will focus on IoT (Internet of Things), offering young entrepreneurs at the early stages of development - investments in the amount of $1 million, support and professional guidance based on the partners’ experience and knowledge, as well as direct access to studies on technology and entrepreneurship, and support for the product until its launch in international markets. i3 was established in partnership with Qualcomm Ventures, GE Corporation, Chinese giant HNA, Tel Aviv University (through Ramot, the University’s business arm), Microsoft Ventures and Indian Holding Company TATA.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 13, 2016
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