IN Venture has closed the first $70 million of its $150 million second fund. The fund is led by managing partners Eitan Naor and Eyal Rosner who feel sure that the tech industry will be able to get through the difficult time that the tech industry is currently undergoing.
Naor says, "Companies were raising at crazy valuations, and everyone made profits on paper but now everything is going down and this is an opportunity to build companies properly and invest at normal values. We have made almost no investments over the past year because of this. Now that the market has returned to normality, valuations have been restored to a balance. The pricing has become logical, the market is back to normality and the entrepreneurs have also regained sanity."
IN Venture has a commitment from Japanese industrial giant Sumitomo Corp., which was behind the $100 million first fund. Naor and Rosen hope to complete the fund with investments from financial institutions in Japan and southeast Asia as well as institutional investors in Israel.
Naor and Rosen say that there have been good returns from the first fund, which invested in seven companies, among them quantum software company Classiq, which had a valuation of $135 million in May according to PitchBook, and hydrogen energy company H2Pro, which reached a valuation of $245 million. Other portfolio companies are remote vehicle operations company Ottopia and personalized engagement company Anagog.
IN Ventures's first and only exit, to date, was cryptocurrency security company GK8, which was dsold to Celsius at the end of 2021 for $115 million cash.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on August 3 2022.
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