June 5, 2023
GV, Google parent Alphabet’s independent $8 billion early-stage venture capital firm, has a message for the markets: They’re planning for the long haul. The firm is promoting four partners to general partner to take on the wide range of areas GV is funneling cash into—including, of course, generative A.I.
The firm promoted partners Issi Rozen, Frédérique Dame, Brendan Bulik-Sullivan, and Crystal Huang to general partner, they told me. Dame has been at GV since 2018 focusing on consumer tech, and hails from the likes of Uber and Yahoo; Rozen, who’s been at GV for four years and focuses on biotech as well as GV’s incubation efforts, is a serial entrepreneur who cofounded GV portfolio company Verve Therapeutics and was also a professional jazz guitarist; Huang, focused on tech including fintech and A.I., previously worked at venture firms NEA and GGV Capital; and Bulik-Sullivan, at GV since 2019, focuses on biotech and therapeutics after previously designing machine learning models at portfolio company Gritstone Oncology. Huang and Dame are currently GV’s only female GPs, as former GP Jessica Verrilli departed GV in April.
The promotions bring the roughly 14-year-old firm’s total number of general partners up to 15—which, to me, seems like a lot of investors sharing the prized title. But the way Rozen sees it, it’s a market signal and a “vote of confidence” in GV: “15 GPs at GV means that we can do really special things over the next 15 years,” Rozen says. He views it as “a long-term horizon commitment” to continue to invest. When I asked whether GV is an equal partnership, they wouldn’t comment on economics but said that it’s akin to the typical venture firm structure.
The four new GV GPs are split between the firm’s life sciences and digital teams. Huang is tackling generative A.I., and is particularly interested in enterprise use-cases of A.I. geared to compliance and copyright. GV recently invested in A.I. startup Typeface’s $65 million fundraise, where GV was “a large part of that” round, Huang says. Dame, meanwhile, is interested in investing in more women’s health startups, as well as consumer companies like shopping app Checkmate, where she just invested in the startup’s $15 million May round. Both Rozen and Bulik-Sullivan are spending time looking into and investing in later-stage therapeutics firms, while Rozen notes he’s interested in the latest developments in gene editing.
GV makes on average about 50 deals per year and has announced over 20 deals so far in 2023 (48 including follow-ons, they told me), with “half a dozen that will be announced soon,” Dame says.
The move comes at a time when the broader startup and VC market is continuing to wrestle with higher interest rates, slumping funding levels, and anxious LPs. But lucky for GV, they only have to deal with one investor: “This is the perfect time to have, you know, a stable, visionary LP with a lot of patience and ambition to invest in new emerging tech,” Huang says of Alphabet. And clearly the company isn’t letting its foot off the gas in the A.I. war, where the Big Tech giants like Microsoft and Google are battling it out against each other and against open-source entrants.
Huang says Alphabet has been “a super collaborative partner in this effort” to invest in generative A.I., although GV isn’t mandated by the corporate giant to make strategic investments.
Though many founders seem to still be holding out raising fresh funding in an effort to avoid the treacherous market conditions, Dame says she’s as busy as ever. Huang echoes the sentiment: GV’s digital team altogether is taking upwards of 100 meetings a week.
Deal scoop from Fortune’s Luisa Beltran: Bond Financial Technologies, which has been up for sale this year, may have found a buyer. Fidelity National Information Services, or FIS, is in talks to buy Bond, according to four banking and venture sources familiar with the situation. Financial terms were unclear and an announcement is not expected anytime soon, the people said. Bond provides software that lets companies of all sorts offer products such as credit cards and debit cards. The fintech raised $32 million in funding in 2020, in a round led by Coatue’s VC fund, Fortune reported. Bond went on the block earlier this year; Goldman Sachs, also a Bond investor, advised on the process, people said. FIS is one of the world’s biggest financial services companies, with a $32.8 billion market capitalization. News of FIS’s interest was reported by Fintech Business Weekly. Bond and Goldman did not immediately return messages for comment. “We don’t comment on rumor and market speculation,” an FIS spokesman said.
Fortune 500: It’s easy to forget that some of the biggest and most influential companies were once fledgling startups, but if you’re curious who made the cut this year on the gold standard for big business in America, the Fortune 500, check out this year’s list announced this morning.
And now for this month’s cartoon from Ian Foley…
See you tomorrow,
Anne Sraders
Twitter: @AnneSraders
Email: anne.sraders@fortune.com
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Jackson Fordyce curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.
