Pitango Venture Capital, one of the most active VCs in the Israeli startup scene, has announced its seventh fund, Pitango Venture Capital 7. The fund will have $175 million under management, and invest from seed upwards. The new fund focuses on IT and life science investments, specializing in enterprise infrastructure, IoT, artificial intelligence and digital health.
The new fund joins Pitango’s first Growth Fund, which focuses on late-stage companies and which came out last year.
This latest move brings Pitango’s recent capital raising to a total of $400 million in both funds, taking its total assets under management to $2 billion.
Pitango Venture Capital 7’s first investment is in Graphcore, a 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.
Rami Beracha, Eyal Niv and Ittai Harel lead Pitango’s investments in young companies. Beracha commented that the twin strategy of a seed and growth fund “gives us the flexibility needed in today’s entrepreneurial world for initial investments in the early stages and leading large rounds in later stages.”
Niv commented: “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 has also established two seed investment platforms for the fields of IoT and digital medicine. MindUp is a Haifa-based incubator supported by Israel’s Chief Scientist, focused on “deeptech.” In addition, Pitango established an investment platform named i3 Equity Partners, which will focus on IoT (Internet of Things), offering early-stage entrepreneurs investment in the region of $1 million. 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.
A recent report by IVC Research Center and Israeli law firm APM & Co. marked out the top VC firms in Israel. As well as Pitango, it points out Singulariteam’s $232 million fund; Carmel Ventures with $802 million under management; Magma, with $450 million under management; and TheTime with a $60 million fund.
Source: Israeli VC Pitango launches its 7th early-stage fund of $175M | TechCrunch
