Fundraising

A new $10.4m vehicle targeting South Africa's university ecosystem is due to be approved on September 28.

The Visegrad Fund has been pumping money into driving innovation and entrepreneurship across Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

University of California-aligned Mission Bay Capital's third fund attracted UC Investments, Eli Lilly, Astellas Pharma and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati as limited partners.

Woodford Investment Management is reportedly poised for another beating as its portfolio company BenevolentAI seeks funding from Temasek at half of its previous $2bn valuation.

Max Planck Foundation joined the EIF and AWS as a limited partner in university-focused drug discovery fund Khan Technology Transfer Fund I.

TIAP, previously Mars Innovation, has lured drug firm Amgen to co-invest in portfolio businesses based on its members' health sciences research.

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.