Fundraising

Kairos Ventures, a venture capital firm with ties to multiple academic institutions, hopes to raise $250m for its third main fund.

A second US-China Green Fund equipped with $350m to $400m is expected to launch later this year with the backing of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

UMI has become a LP in Yissum's $7m Racah Nano Venture Fund as part of an alliance aimed at bringing advanced materials and nanotechnology applications to the Japan.

The education services provider is set to invest $4.2m in university-based startups in support of open innovation platform Wain Connect.

UCLouvain's Vives hopes to raise $55.4m altogether for a new VC fund targeting its spinouts and those of regional academic partners.

A write-down on WPCT's largest asset Industrial Heat has left the trust in breach of its own borrowing limit, sending shares spiraling 7.6% during Monday's trading.

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.