In addition to SpaceX and Tesla, Neuralink is another Elon Musk company. Focused on building a brain machine interface, Neuralink today announced a Series C funding round of $205 million that Alphabet’s GV participated in.
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Alphabet’s GV — formerly Google Ventures — has made a sizeable investment in Carl Pei’s fledging audio and hardware brand “Nothing” during a $15 million in a Series A funding round.
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Projects in the X Moonshot Factory often graduate to independent companies within the Alphabet umbrella. Other times they leaves the research lab without any affiliation, as was the case with Dandelion Energy. GV and Comcast Ventures today announced a $16 million investment in the geothermal-based home heating and cooling solution.
Reflecting technology’s increased focus in health and medicine, GV today announced its hire of biotechnology veteran David Schenkein to co-lead life science investments for Alphabet’s venture capital firm.
GV is one of Alphabet and Google’s various venture capital arms, with notable investments including Uber and Nest. A new report today details how GV has long-used an algorithm — dubbed “The Machine” — to permit or prohibit new and follow-on investment rounds.
One particular area of investment for GV, formerly Google Ventures, is “Life Sciences & Health,” with the venture firm’s bet into the field paying off following a large acquisition. Founded by ex-Googlers, Flatiron Health was acquired yesterday (via CNBC) for $1.9 billion by Swiss medical giant Roche.
Meal replacement company Soylent has raised $50 million in a Series B investment round led by GV. This is not the first food investment by Alphabet’s venture capital arm, though Google co-founder Larry Page is apparently a fan of Soylent’s powders and drinks.
Last year, Google Ventures founder and CEO Bill Maris left the firm. Maris went on to start his own venture capital fund, raising $230 million in debt before abruptly pulling the plug. Now, according to a new report from Axios, Maris is trying again, this time launching a new, smaller-scale venture capital firm with a broader focus…
Following the company’s opposition to recent immigration orders put in place by the Trump administration, Alphabet’s venture capital arm, GV, is helping raise money for the American Civil Liberties Union on its website. Additionally, GV has reportedly made a “significant” donation to the organization, calling it the most important investment it will make this year.
We told you last month that Bill Maris, the founder and now ex-CEO of Google Ventures, had left the firm and its parent company, Alphabet. Now, a report from CNBC says that he is raising money for his own venture capital fund:
Bill Maris, the former head of Google Ventures, is raising money for his own venture capital fund, according to people familiar with the matter.
According to a new report from Recode, the founder and CEO of Google Ventures – recently rebranded as GV – is leaving the firm and the firm’s parent company, Alphabet. The report, citing “sources,” says that Bill Maris will depart this coming Friday, August 12th.
Update: The Financial Times is reporting that Google Ventures is shutting down its $125 million European fund. Starting in 2016, all investments will be made by a global fund, rather than having separate US and European divisions. Five investments made by its European fund were in the UK, while the sixth, a Swedish VR gaming studio, was invested by its US fund.
As 2015 comes to a close, Google Ventures, Alphabet’s venture capital arm, has released their year in review. In a letter, CEO Bill Maris says the firm invested in 39 companies this year and has $2.4 billion under management. For comparison, they had $1.6 billion and invested in 57 new companies last year.
With the announcement that Google has completely reorganized its entire business under a new parent company called Alphabet, there are still many questions floating around about what products belong with what companies now.
Thanks to Google’s SEC filing, we’ve got some answers on that front.
Google Capital has led a $100M investment in Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity company with strong government ties, reports the WSJ. Supporting investors include Rackspace, Accel and Warburg Pincus.
Its head of investigations, Shawn Henry, is the former top computer-crimes official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crowdstrike’s D.C.-based chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, has a long history of calling out foreign hacker groups.
Crowdstrike offers a remote monitoring service for its clients’ networks, aiming to detect hacking attempts at an early stage. Where hackers have already penetrated, the company works to identify the group responsible.
Google Capital was formed last year to provide funding for successful companies looking for growth. It sits alongside Google Ventures, which provides early-stage funding for startups. Google Capital partner Gene Frantz said that they were “blown away” by the company tripling its billings year-on-year.
“We were blown away by CrowdStrike’s incredible growth and impressive customer adoption,” said Gene Frantz, partner at Google Capital. “They have a truly unique SaaS-based endpoint security model, a highly scalable subscription revenue model, and a visionary technical approach that has huge potential to transform the industry, which is why we’re thrilled to make this investment.”
Digg founder Kevin Rose was first hired by Google as a partner at Google Ventures in early 2012, and today we learned Rose is shaking up his involvement at the search company’s investment arm. As Fortune notes, Kevin Rose decided several months back to move from general partner to venture partner at Google Ventures, and today Rose shared that his role will shift to an advisory one.
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Google announced today that it’s kicking off a new program that will see the company hand out $100,000 in credits to its Google Cloud Platform services to help early-stage startups. Google will choose eligible companies through 50 partners that include a mix of incubators, accelerators and investors:
This offer supports our core Google Cloud Platform philosophy: we want developers to focus on code; not worry about managing infrastructure. Starting today, startups can take advantage of this offer and begin using the same infrastructure platform we use at Google… Thousands of startups have built successful applications on Google Cloud Platform and those applications have grown to serve tens of millions of users.
It will also provide the startups chosen with 24/7 support, and access to our technical solutions team.
Those interested in learning more can visit Google’s new Cloud Platform for Startups site.
Uber, the app-based car service that Google recently sunk $250M into via its Google Ventures investment arm, today announced that its cars in Philadelphia this summer will have free WiFi courtesy of Google. Google also made an announcement on its own blog noting that the initiative is sponsored by Google Apps for Businesses, the online suite of productivity tools that Google hopes users in the back of the new WiFi-equipped Uber vehicles will take advantage of.
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Former Google marketing exec Wael Ghonim, who was one of the key leaders of the Egyptian revolution, has rejoined Google as an entrepreneur-in-residence in Google Ventures as preparation for a possible new business venture, reports Fortune.
Ghonim realized the power of social media to mobilize protestors in Egypt, and was a strong voice for the power of peaceful protest and non-violent civil disobedience. He is best known for creating the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page to draw attention to a young Egyptian tortured to death by the country’s police.
Following the successful removal of Hosni Mubarak and the former regime in Egypt, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people of 2011 …
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Update: @evleaks has screenshots of the Android companion app:
Google: coming to a thermostat near you
[https://t.co/8lPHX9vONK] pic.twitter.com/EftKr5ZrKG— Evan Blass (@evleaks) December 17, 2013
According to a new report from The Information, Google is currently testing Internet-connected thermostats, similar to products like the Nest, to help people easily monitor and adjust energy use. The report, citing “two people told about the project,” claims that Google has been testing the service in the St. Louis area with “Trusted Testers” that are not employees.
The report goes on to add that the project is reportedly dubbed “EnergySense” and the hardware is reportedly created by a third party, such as Ecobee. Ecobee denies that it is working with Google, but says that the company could still be using its hardware.
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Google Ventures, the Google-backed group that “provides seed, venture, and growth-stage funding to the best companies” just released their 2013 year-end report. The group, which has previously backed major names like RetailMeNot, Uber and Nest reports more than 75 new investments this year totaling more than 225 companies in total.
Google Ventures’ $250M investment in Uber makes a lot more sense with some news reported by Jessica Lessin this morning. The site is reporting that Google is making its own driverless cars to be “robo taxis”:
Google Inc., which has been working on software to help major automakers build self-driving cars, also is quietly going around them by designing and developing a full-fledged self-driving car, according to people familiar with the matter.
While the Prius has been Google’s main guinea pig of the self-driving car efforts, it looks like Google would like to control the entire manufacturing experience for these cars. In addition, the company’s focus is geared towards driver-free taxi services rather than selling the cars direct to consumers.
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When we heard reports late last month that Google might be planning to assemble its Google Glass headsets in the US, we also heard the company was preparing to make a ‘few thousand’ units of its Explorer Edition for contest winners and others receiving the opportunity to purchase the $1500 hardware. Today we get a bit of an update with Google confirming at its “Glass Collective” event that Glass will ship within the next month (via TechCrunch).
It’s not too surprising given Google I/O is set to take place next month starting May 15, but Google also announced today that it will be offering seed funding to developers within the Glass ecosystem through a new fund dubbed “Glass Collective”:
Here at Google Ventures, my partners and I thought the potential for Glass was significant enough to invite our friends at Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to join us in exploring this big opportunity. We’ve formed the Glass Collective, an investment syndicate between our three firms, to provide seed funding to entrepreneurs in the Glass ecosystem to help jumpstart their ideas.
Google will start its seed investments in the US and along with its Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and KPCB, will be reviewing applications for Glass ideas submitted to the various firms involved.
Mike Isaac at AllThingsD reported:
Daniel Burka, one of the founding members of mobile development lab Milk, announced Monday that he is leaving his current position inside Google+ to join Google Ventures.
Burka occupied the mobile user experience position at Google+. At Google’s venture arm, he’ll join as a design partner.
Following recently signing MGM and Paramount Pictures to add over 1,000 new movies for rent, Google is once again investing in content for YouTube. Today AllThingsD reported the company is about to invest in Machinima, a network featuring videos about videogames that is pulling in about a billion views monthly.
People familiar with the round tell me it should end up raising more than $30 million, and will value the company at around $190 million, post-funding. No comment from Google or Machinima.
The report explained, unlike its past deals with content creators where it recoups over $100 million in investments through ad sales, the Machinima deal would be the first time Google takes an equity stake in a YouTube content provider:
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