Almaz Capital

Almaz Capital
Company typePrivate
IndustryVenture capital
Founded2008
HeadquartersPortola Valley, California, United States
Key people
Managing Partner: Alexander Galitsky, General Partners: Geoffrey Baehr, Pavel Bogdanov, Charles E. Ryan, Aniruddha Nazaré
Websitehttps://almazcapital.com/

Almaz Capital is a global VC fund headquartered in Portola Valley, California, United States investing in early stage, capital efficient technology companies in high-growth sectors. Almaz Capital focuses on disruptive deep tech companies in b2b software space, including AI/ML and Blockchain applications, IoT and Edge Computing Enablers, Cybersecurity, etc. Since its foundation the firm's portfolio has included about 50 companies, with more than 300 million US dollars invested in them.[1]

The fund's investors include European Investment Fund (EIF), Cisco, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group.

Almaz Capital is headquartered in Portola Valley, California, has an office in Berlin and representative offices in offices in Kyiv (Ukraine), Warsaw (Poland) and other Central and Eastern European countries.[2] Almaz Capital's partners are Alexander Galitsky, Geoffrey Baehr, Pavel Bogdanov, Charles E. Ryan and Aniruddha Nazaré.

History

In 2004, Cisco approached Alexander Galitsky, former scientist and technological entrepreneur who was appointed as president of the first Tech Tour [3] in East Europe — a specialized forum in which international investors visited countries with growing venture markets and got to know local startups,[4] and offered him financing to establish a venture fund to invest into East European startup companies. Galitsky selected the bridge fund model and has focused on investing in and connecting Eastern European startups creating promising technologies for global markets with western companies that can benefit from engineering resources in Eastern Europe.[5][6][7]

Alexander Galitsky founded Almaz Capital in 2008 together with three partners: Charles Emmitt Ryan, founder of United Financial Group [ru], senior advisor at Deutsche Bank and former CEO of Deutsche Bank Russia; Peter Loukianoff who was working for Alloy Ventures and Pavel Bogdanov. Geoffrey Baehr,[8] a former General Partner at US Venture Partners (USVP), who used to curate joint projects with Galitsky in the 1990s when he was CNO at Sun Microsystems later joined Almaz Capital as advisor. In 2011, Loukianoff resigned from Almaz Capital and Baehr became fund's fourth general partner.[6][9][10]

Funds

Almaz Capital Fund I was backed in 2008 with a capital of $72 mln. Among its investors, Almaz Capital I attracted $30 million from Cisco and more $20 million were given by UFG partners. After a year, a third investor appeared in the Fund — Еuropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) who invested around $20 mln. The first fund’s activity was focused on the search for interesting projects within the territory of CIS countries to be in demand in the global market.[6][11][12]

In 2013, Almaz Capital II was established. It raised around $200 million from its limited partners.[5][13] Cisco remained Almaz Capital's major investor in fund II with other major investment coming from UFG, EBRD and the International Finance Corporation. In an interview for the Vedomosti newspaper, Galitsky noted that Almaz Capital II attracted money from several family offices.[5][6][7] The second fund excluded Russia’s originated companies from the list of new investments and expanded the geography of its activity to cover not only CIS countries but also some regions of East Europe.[citation needed]

Almaz Fund’s III with a capital of $191 mln final close was in 2021. EBRD still remained the main investor enriched by European International Fund (EIF).[14] The geographical focus mostly moved to the Eastern European countries, although CIS is still in the scope of interest of the Fund.[15]

Investments

Almaz Capital I was focused on startups from CIS and the United States and the second fund extended its geography to Eastern European countries.[5][6][7][16] From 2008 to 2022 Almaz Capital invested over 300 million dollars in over 50 companies.[17][18][6]

Main co-investors of the fund: Andreessen Horowitz,[19] Bessemer Ventures,[20] Founders Fund,[21][22] Foundry Group,[23] General Catalyst,[21][24] GGV Capital,[21][24] Google Ventures,[25] Insight Partners, Khosla Ventures,[26] Tiger Global Management.[27][28][29]

The fund's key portfolio companies include:

  • 3DLOOK (Mobile based body scanning technology that implements user measurement and shape data to optimize the fit of clothing purchased online);[30][31][32]
  • Acronis (ownership received in 2014 following Acronis acquisition of Almaz portfolio company, nScaled);[33][34][35]
  • GoodData (round syndicated with Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital and Tenaya Capital in 2014);[36][37]
  • GridGain (joint round with Sberbank, MoneyTime Ventures and RTP Ventures);[38][39][40]
  • DMarket (An in-game item trading platform and a player-owned economy solution);[41][42]
  • Minut (Manufactures and provides security devices designed to offer home security. Its product Point recognizes things like alarms, windows breaking or unexpected activity and combines sound and sensor data to recognize events);[43][44][45]
  • Refurbed (Marketplace for refurbished electronics);[46][47]
  • Mobalytics (The company is developing a Gamer Performance Index (GPI) that involves using in-game data available from game APIs and crunching it through machine learning algorithms to analyze and improve player performance);[48][49][50]
  • Neptune (Metadata store for MLOps, built for research and production teams that run a lot of experiments);[51][52][53]
  • OneSoil (OneSoil builds mobile and web apps that use satellite imagery for agricultural analytics and provides field insights for farmers and agricultural consultants);[54][55][56]
  • Virtuozzo (Software company, specializing in virtualization software) [57][58][59]
  • Hover (3D modelling platform for property, several rounds since 2012 together with Alsop Louie Partners, Google Ventures, The Home Depot);[60][61]
  • Petcube (joint round with Y Combinator, Cabra.vc and AVentures in 2015);[62][63][64]

Exits

As of May 2022 the fund had 18 exit transactions:[29][18]

Among the most notable exits of the fund:

Company

General Partners

Advisors

Almaz Capital's advisors are Java language author James Gosling, Diffie-Hellman protocol author Whitfield Diffie, Duane Northcutt, and astronaut Ed Lu.[88]

References

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  22. ^ "Mobalytics Raises $2.6 Million to Analyze and Improve Competitive Gamer Performance" (Press release). 16 November 2016.
  23. ^ "MakeTime Adds $8 Million from Foundry Group and Follow-On Investors" (Press release). 3 May 2016.
  24. ^ a b "Mobalytics secured $11.25M from Almaz Capital, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and GGV Capital".
  25. ^ "GV leads $25M investment in Hover, a computer vision startup that digitizes your home". 29 January 2018.
  26. ^ "Poland-based Nomagic, which makes pick-and-place warehouse robots, raises a $22M Series a led by Khosla Ventures, Almaz Capital, and European Investment Bank (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch) - Times News Network". 27 May 2022.
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  40. ^ "GridGain Secures $10 Million in Series B Funding". GridGain Systems. 2013-07-30. Retrieved 2022-06-13.
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  51. ^ "Neptune.ai – Almaz Capital".
  52. ^ "We Raised $8M Series A to Continue Building Experiment Tracking and Model Registry That "Just Works"". neptune.ai. 2022-04-13. Retrieved 2022-06-13.
  53. ^ Novac, Dragos. "Neptune AI secures $8 million in a round led by Almaz Capital". Nordic 9. Retrieved 2022-06-13.
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