Fundraising

UCT and Stellenbosch will provide matching funding to enhance the impact of the $9.9m University Technology Fund.

Cambridge University Ventures SEIS Fund will back businesses from the Cambridge ecosystem, including those founded by students and recent graduates.

MPM Oncology Innovations Fund will invest half of its corpus in Dana-Farber's oncology pipeline, backing 15 cancer-related startups altogether.

The University Technology Fund hopes to tap investment funds and development finance institutions to raise additional capital.

Parkwalk's seventh co-investment vehicle with University of Cambridge will nurture early-stage spinouts from the institution.

Fonds de solidarité FTQ has officially invested $5m in the fourth fund of ULB's Theodorus, with Théo Risopoulos named as the first team member of a new Quebec office.

Steady is the assessment that comes to mind, rather than remarkable, when probing the year-on-year direction of corporate venture capital investment in university spinouts.

With hundreds of university venture funds, internal commercialisation vehicles and third-party firms the reality in today’s innovation ecosystem, selecting the nominees and the winner for Investment Unit of the Year is increasingly challenging.

One only has to look at the investors in the €117m ($135m) final close for Imec.xpand, the venture fund of nano-electronics research institute Imec, to see why it is worthy of GUV’s Fundraising of the Year award.