Israel’s Pitango — backers of Boxee, Anobit (now part of Apple), fring, mySupermarket, and many other startups — is gearing up for a new round of investment activity: the venture capital firm has announced a $150 million first closing on its latest fund. The firm is aiming for Pitango VI, as the fund is called, to eventually total $250 million.
As with previous investments, Pitango says that it will be using this fund for seed, pre-seed and growth-stage investments in older companies. All investments from now will come out of this fund, it says.
The company has a pretty extensive portfolio that speaks to its diversification approach to investing. It covers communications, networking, enterprise, internet, semiconductors, as well as life sciences and cleantech. These are all set to remain focus points for the firm, it said. To date, the company has invested more than $1.4 billion in startups, covering over 160 startups, making it one of the largest VCs in Israel.
It’s on a net positive lean in that regard: total exits for the company have been over $2 billion. In addition to Anobit getting acquired by Apple, other exits have included superDimension (Covidien); WorkLight (IBM); and VideoSurf (Microsoft), among several others.
While some like to talk of bubbles in the tech world, Pitango talks of opportunity:
“We are witnessing a growing flow of innovative ventures, more than ever before, and we plan to use the new fund for investing in exceptional entrepreneurs and start-ups, from pre-seed to mature stages,” Rami Kalish, co-founder and managing GP of Pitango said in a statement. “Pitango VI’s size will allow us the flexibility required for making initial investments in pre-seed stages, all the way to leading larger investment rounds in expansion and late-stage companies.” Other partners include Chemi Peres, Aaron Mankovski, Rami Beracha, Isaac Hillel, Zeev Binman, Ruti Alon, Rona Segev, Ittai Harel, Eitan Bek and David Israeli.