All posts tagged: fund

New Zealand scraps world-first smoking ‘generation ban’ to fund tax cuts | New Zealand

Published by Sam

New Zealand’s new government will scrap the country’s world-leading law to ban smoking for future generations to help pay for tax cuts – a move that public health officials believe will cost thousands of lives and be “catastrophic” for Māori communities. In 2022 the country passed pioneering legislation which introduced a steadily rising smoking age to stop those born after January 2009 from ever being able to legally buy cigarettes. The law was designed to prevent thousands of smoking-related deaths and save the health system billions of dollars. The legislation, which is thought have inspired a plan in the UK to phase out smoking for future generations, contained a slew of other measures to make smoking less affordable and accessible. It included dramatically reducing the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products, allowing their sale only through special tobacco stores, and slashing the number of stores legally allowed to sell cigarettes from 6,000 to just 600 nationwide. The laws were due to be implemented from July 2024. But as part of its coalition agreement with …

EU climate chief: China must help fund rescue of poorer nations hit by disaster | Cop28

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China and other big developing nations must pay into a fund to rescue poor countries stricken by the climate disaster, the EU’s climate chief has said as world leaders prepare to gather in Dubai for a crucial climate summit. Wopke Hoekstra, EU commissioner for climate action, said there was no longer any reason to exclude big emerging economies with high greenhouse gas emissions such as China and petrostates in the Gulf from the obligation to provide aid to the poorest and most vulnerable countries. “We need so much more money that we need basically everyone with the ability to pay to chip in,” Hoekstra said to a small group of journalists, including the Observer. “Climate financing, climate action, will take significantly more money. I’m not talking about 20% or 30% more – incremental amounts – but factors more in the years to come. We need private sector money and we need a lot more public sector money.” The question of finance for poor countries will take centre stage at Cop28, a fortnight-long summit of world …

Saviu Ventures’ second fund reaches €12 million first close to back Francophone Africa startups

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Saviu Ventures, a VC firm targeting startups in Francophone Africa, has made an initial close of €12 million for its second fund with the backing of private investors, including French and Kenyan family offices. The VC firm aims to close the fund at between €30 million and €50 million to primarily invest in startups within Francophone Africa. It is said to be in talks with other stakeholders including institutional investors to hit the target. Founded by Benoit Delestre and Samuel Touboul, Saviu Ventures has been active in the Francophone Africa startup ecosystem since 2018, when it began deploying its first €10 million fund. The VC firm invests in seed stage startups, and is sector agnostic, but, with the current fund, it is keen on fintechs, health-techs and climate-techs, while slowing down on e-mobility, e-commerce and e-logistics. “We will follow the same strategy of our first fund, where our majority of our investment will go to startups in the Francophone region, but we still keep the opportunity to invest in East, Southern and North Africa startups …

Kinterra Capital’s debut $565M fund to support mining for battery metals

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Kinterra Capital, a Canadian private equity firm, has closed its $565 million debut fund dedicated to securing critical mineral assets for battery development. The influx of private capital comes amid increasing government incentives into the sourcing and production of battery materials in North America. Kinterra’s oversubscribed round will target asset-level investments in North America, Western Europe and Australia over the next eight to 10 years, according to the company. That means investments into lithium mines, operations to uncover cobalt, nickel and graphite, battery manufacturing plants, energy storage solutions, raw materials processing plants and other technology needed to extract, process and recycle critical battery minerals. Kinterra says its fund has already invested “substantial capital” in a number of assets with “a robust near term pipeline.” Specifically, the firm has invested in Canon Resources, an owner and operator of two nickel development projects in Western Australia; another nickel processing plant in Quebec; and White Pine North, a large copper development project in the U.S. “The structural underinvestment in critical minerals over the past decade has resulted in …

SEVA, a new growth equity fund, secures $85M for debut fund in four months

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After five years sharpening his technology investor skills at Susquehanna Growth Equity, Shalin Mehta is now a solo general partner at his own growth equity firm, securing $85 million in capital commitments for his debut fund. While at Susquehanna, the 29-year-old led investments in companies, including NoRedInk and MuckRack. Now with SEVA, a firm he started earlier this year, Mehta intends to invest in New York-based customer-centric founders of fast-growing, bootstrapped companies to scale via profitable growth, he told TechCrunch. Mehta and three other team members lead SEVA, a name inspired by the Sanskrit word meaning “selfless service.” “That means to be in service of,” Mehta explained. “If anything, I have served in the last decade of my career, it’s customer-centric founders and companies. That’s why I made the decision to start SEVA earlier this year.” SEVA joins a growing list of emerging fund managers debuting their first funds this year, including Avra, Faction Ventures, Yellow, Garuda Ventures, Ovni Capital, Oversubscribed Ventures, Emblem, Venture Guides, The Family Fund and Phenomenal Ventures. Unlike some emerging fund …

Cybersecurity investor Ballistic Ventures seeks $300M for new fund

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Ballistic Ventures, a venture capital firm dedicated to funding and incubating cybersecurity startups, is looking to raise as much as $300 million for a new fund, according to a regulatory filing. The San Francisco-based VC firm Wednesday filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $300 million for its second fund — over a year after launching its first fund of the same amount in May 2022. Ballistic spokesperson Michelle Kincaid declined to comment on the filing when reached by TechCrunch. Aimed at early-stage cybersecurity and cyber-related startups, Ballistic Ventures is co-founded by Kleiner Perkins’ general partner Ted Schlein, along with Barmak Meftah, Jake Seid and Roger Thornton as the three other general partners, and Mandiant founder Kevin Mandia as its strategic partner. The VC firm also has Derek Smith as a strategic advisor and Agnes So as the firm’s finance and operations chief. So far, Ballistic has backed a dozen startups, per the details available on the firm’s website. Ballistic says its founded, operated and funded over 90 cybersecurity firms. To date, the …

Female Founders Fund looks to raise $75 million for new fund

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Female Founders Fund on Tuesday filed with the SEC to start raising $75 million for its fourth fund, TechCrunch+ can exclusively report. That amount is the biggest yet from FFF: Fund I was just $6 million, and Fund II was $25 million. In 2021, it closed an oversubscribed $57 million for Fund III, which saw Goldman Sachs, Pivotal Ventures, and Plexo Capital come on as limited partners. Source link

Former YC Continuity head targets $350 million growth-stage fund

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Anu Hariharan, who led YC Continuity before the storied accelerator scrapped the program, has partnered with two of her former colleagues and former Brex executive Lucas Fox to launch a new fund that is targeting about $350 million fundraise and operating a program that some peg as “YC for growth,” four sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The new fund, whose name is Avra, plans to operate an eight-week program with a cohort of about a dozen post-Series A startups each quarter. The invite-only program will pick startups that are roughly generating between $3 million to $10 million in revenue, people briefed on the program told TechCrunch. Resembling Y Combinator’s approach, the initiative aims to connect startup founders with experienced entrepreneurs at the late-stage. Together with Avra’s partners — besides Hariharan and Fox, another two former YC executives are founding members of Avra, according to sources — these seasoned business leaders will guide the newer CEOs through various challenges, including how to mature in the leadership role, and assist them in steering clear of …

Monta Vista Capital closes its largest fund to date

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Seed-stage startups focused on business-to-business have another source of capital to go after. Monta Vista Capital secured $48 million in capital commitments for its third fund — its largest to date — to support B2B startups. The Silicon Valley firm was founded by Venktesh Shukla, who started investing at the angel stage as part of entrepreneurship group TiE Silicon Valley, also serving as a former president. He is the current chair of TiE Global. Venktesh Shukla, Monta Vista Capital, venture capital Shukla and his group of partners, including Roger Krakoff, general partner, have expertise in the areas of AI, cloud, security and data. They take a team approach to investing and often do so at the pre-revenue stage. Monta Vista targets startups in infrastructure, vertical SaaS and digital transformation of industries, like mining and textiles. “We have these deep, deep domain experts that we rely on for diligence and for the judgment call before we make the investment,” Shukla told TechCrunch. “And, unlike most of the seed funds, which typically have a one-person operation fund …

Interplay secures $45M for third fund focused on B2B marketplaces, vertical software

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Interplay, a New York-based venture capital firm, closed on its third fund with $45 million in capital commitments. The firm, focused on investments at the Series A stage, deploys capital into software, including B2B marketplace and vertical software. The new fund is a continuation of the firm’s prior two early-stage funds. We previously covered Interplay in 2022 when it was raising a separate vehicle. Within the marketplace industry, Interplay sees companies digitizing areas that had not yet entered that stage simply because the economics previously did not make sense, Mark Peter Davis, Interplay founder and managing partner, told TechCrunch. “The overarching trend is we see a major shift towards specialization, happening particularly over the last decade. These horizontal platforms have become more and more tailored and specific to particular industries,” Davis said. “We’ve had a lot of success investing around this shift, and that’s the underlying thesis of this vintage.” In those prior funds, Interplay had what Davis called “an angel vintage.” What’s different with Fund III is that it’s institutional funds, with backing from …