If you want to have a sense of just how drastically the venture industry has changed since the boom turned bust, you don't have to look much farther than SoftBank Group Corp.
Six years ago, under CEO Masayoshi Son, the Japanese conglomerate formed its first Vision Fund, the first-ever $100 billion venture investment vehicle. The fund took Silicon Valley and the wider startup world by storm, investing hundred of millions of dollars — and sometimes more — in individual startups in an attempt to crown winners in various sectors. That strategy had mixed results at best — for every Uber Technologies Inc. and DoorDash Inc. the Vision Fund invested in that achieved some success, there seemed to be a WeWork Inc. or Wag Labs Inc. that either didn't pan or worse.
Even so, SoftBank, whose investment unit has one of its primary offices in San Carlos, continued to pour big money into startups as late as the second quarter of last year, when its now two Vision funds invested $2.2 billion combined, according to a presentation it released Thursday along with its latest financial results. While that amount was well down from a year earlier, when the two funds invested $15.6 billion, that one-quarter tally was larger than the total amount of investment capital raised by the vast majority of venture funds.
Since then, though, the conglomerate has cut back even farther. Over the last three quarters, its Vision funds have invested about $1 billion total. Indeed, if you look at the chart of the funds quarterly investments, it resembles that for the entire industry, only taken to much bigger extremes.
Here's more Bay Area venture and startup news at the end of the week:
Funding rounds
- Amino Inc. (dba Amino Health), San Francisco, $80 million, undisclosed debt and equity round: Transformation Capital led the equity portion and Oxford Finance LLC the debt part of the investment in this provider of a service that helps employees shop for health care providers that take their corporate-provided insurance. Amino did not specify how much of the deal was in debt or equity.
- Cable Tech Inc., San Francisco and London, $11 million, Series A: Stage 2 Capital and Jump Capital led the round for this provider of an automated financial crime prevention and regulatory compliance service for financial institutions. CRV also invested.
- Triumph Labs Inc., San Francisco, $10.2 million, Series A: General Catalyst led the round for this provider of a service that allows game developers to add in real stakes competitions to their apps. Box Group, Heroic Ventures, Nostalgic Modern, Raven One Ventures, Steel Perlot, Strike and Valhalla Ventures also participated.
- Orby AI Inc., Mountain View, $4.5 million, Seed: Pear VC and New Enterprise Associates led the round for this provider of a generative AI-powered service that identifies and automates repetitive workplace tasks.and Wing VC also participated in the funding.
M&A
- Getaround Inc. announced plans to buy most of the assets of HyreCar Inc. for $9.45 million. Based in San Francisco, Getaround (NYSE: GETR) operates a car sharing service. Los Angeles-based HyreCar (Nasdaq: HYREQ) offers a person-to-person car rental service. The companies expect their deal to close May 16.
Funders in the news
- Theory Ventures hired Lauren Demeuse as a partner and its chief operating officer. Before joining the Portola Valley firm, Demeuse was previously an executive in residence at Austin, Texas-based venture outfit 8VC.
- The National Venture Capital Association named Charles Hudson as its board chair for the next year. Hudson is a managing partner at San Francisco-based Precursor Ventures.
The Business Journal's Troy Wolverton contributed to this report. If you have funding or venture capital news, please let us know at svbjnews@bizjournals.com.
