Big Oil’s Bets: Where They’re Investing Across Cleantech, Wearables, and Big Data

We visualize and analyze the private market bets made by oil and gas corporations, including the venture arms of Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobile, BP, Saudi Aramco, Statoil, and many more.

With the price of crude oil falling to a once-unthinkable $27 per barrel, the future of the oil and gas industry has been thrown into uncertainty, and scores of firms have suffered bankruptcies.

Over the last few years, oil and gas giants have not shied away from investing in private companies innovating in diverse areas including cleantech, biofuels, battery tech, wearables, connected fleets, seismic technology, big data, carbon sequestration, and chemicals. Today, innovation can only be more top of mind for the legacy energy giants as they weather the current oil price downturn.

We used CB Insights’ Business Social Graph, which shows how top investors and target companies are related, in order to analyze where some of the top oil and gas companies are striking deals.

Specifically, we analyzed the investment activity of the following 24 corporations and corporate venture arms:

• Chevron Technology Ventures
• Shell Technology Ventures
• Total Energy Ventures International
• Energy Technology Ventures (a joint venture involving General Electric, NRG Energy, and ConocoPhillips)
• Schlumberger Technology Investments
• BP Ventures
• Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures
• ConocoPhillips
• Royal Dutch Shell
• Total
• Flint Hills Resources
• Valero Energy Corp
• Schlumberger
• Koch Industries
• Halliburton
• Wood Group
• Castrol innoVentures
• Kinder Morgan Energy Partners
• ConocoPhillips Technology Ventures
• Statoil
• Plains All American Pipeline
• ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company
• British Gas

Investments in the graph below are connected by green lines, acquisitions by orange lines.

Click on the graph to enlarge. 

Some interesting takeaways from analyzing the graph above:

• Chevron Technology Ventures is by far the most active corporate investor with 110 investments overall. Recent venture investments were diverse and included Airborne Oil & Gas (deepwater pipe solutions), Ensyn Corporation (cell-based biofuels), NSS Labs(cybersecurity), Modumental (high-performance alloys), and MAANA (big data for heavy industry).
• For the most part, oil and gas corporates haven’t touched Silicon Valley-type software or Internet of Things startups. However, several big data platforms, some focused on the energy sector, have attracted their investments. Examples here include Quantico Energy Solutions (Shell, Statoil), MAANA (ConocoPhilips’ and Chevron’s venture arms), WellDog (Shell Technology Ventures), Veros Systems (Shell and Chevron’s venture arms), Utilidata (Saudi Aramco), and Sekal (Statoil, Saudi Aramco). Otherwise, most investments fell into cleantech or other categories more closely related to energy.
• A majority of the corporates in our study invested in biofuels or alternative energy production. A few experimental investments in this area included Cool Planet Energy Systems (biofuels), Prometheus Energy (hydrogen fuel cells), Agilyx (synthetic plastics to crude oil conversion), and Emefcy (wastewater energy harnessing).
• Many portfolios included at least one strictly oil and gas-focused company that could offer strategic value to their core business. Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, for example, invested in InflowControl, a Norwegian company focused on advanced oil control valves. And among Total Energy Ventures’ numerous cleantech portfolio companies wasWireless Seismic, which works on seismic surveying data collection.
• Oilfield services and downstream companies (refineries, storage, transportation, petroleum derivatives) were mostly making acquisitions of smaller energy services companies. Koch Industries, Wood Group, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, and Halliburton’s investment activity are nearly all acquisitions. The standout exception here was Castrol innoVentures, which is mostly focused on connected car startups like Zubie and Peloton Technology.

Overlapping investments:

• The biofuels company Cool Planet Energy Systems saw multiple rounds from BP Ventures, ConocoPhillips, and Energy Technology Ventures, among other top corporate venture groups such as Google Ventures and GE Capital.
• Wearable Intelligence, an industrial grade wearable, and 908 Devices‘ mass spectronomy technology were both coinvestments between Schlumberger Technology Investments and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures.
• ConocoPhillips Technology Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures both invested inZiebel, a fiber optic-based data relay system for oil wells, and MAANA, an analytics startup focused on heavy industry.
• Aquion Energy attracted investment from both Total and Shell’s respective venture arms. Aquion Energy develops industrial batteries for renewable energy tech including wind and solar.

Want more data on where petroleum companies are investing? Check out our private market database below.

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Corporations Cut Back On Funding To Real Estate Tech Startups

Real estate tech investing has tapered off after a heady 2014. Google's investing arms and Qualcomm are among the most active investors in real estate tech.

After a peak year in 2014, corporate funding and deals to real estate technology startups have dropped off considerably this year.

Investment to real estate tech spiked in 2014, reaching almost $275M, across 15 deals. Notable investments in 2014 include a $90M Series B financing to India’s Housing.com in December 2014, at a $250M valuation; a $50M private equity round in March 2014 to Auction.com, at a $1.2B valuation; and Fundrise’s two Series A tranches, including $31M in May 2014 and $7M in September 2014.

In 2015, corporate investment in real estate tech is projected to drop 75% in dollar terms year-over-year, and deals are on track for only half the deal activity seen in 2014.

That said, this year’s funding trend is still higher than annual investment in 2013 and 2012.

Investment Spike In Q4’14

On a quarterly basis, Q4’14 represented the funding and deals peak. Interestingly, 5 of 6 of the deals done in the quarter were to companies headquartered outside the US, including the Series B financing of Uoko in China and the seed financing of Japan-based Space Market.

After a particularly anemic Q1’15 with only 1 deal and $10M in funding involving corporates, deals and dollars bounced back in Q2’15 with $39M invested across 4 deals.

Series B Dollar Share Hits 50%

A considerable majority of dollars in deals involving corporates and real estate tech went to mid- and early-stage startups.

• Early-stage (Angel – Series A) dollar share was 26% across the six-year period between 2010 and 2015 year-to-date. Most of those dollars went to Series A companies.
• Mid-stage (Series B and C companies) dollar share hit 58%, with a lopsided share of that going to Series B stage companies.
• Finally, late-stage (Series D+) dollar share hit 16%, with 0 dollars invested at the Series D stage.

As the chart below shows, a full 50% of the dollars were in Series B rounds.

Early-Stage Commands 61% Of Deal Share

Deals completed at the early-stage accounted for 61% of deal share. Some early-stage deals we tracked between 2010 and 2015 year-to-date include financings of 3D property-modeling startup Matterport,  landlord-tenant collaboration tool Cozy Services, and real estate agent-client matching service HomeLight.

Mid-stage startups took 26% of deal share, meaning more than 1 in 4 deals involving corporates were fundings of real estate tech companies at the Series B or C stages.

Late-stage deals accounted for just 5% of deal share, with all these at the Series E and beyond, and 0 deals completed at the Series D stage.

Most Active Investors

Qualcomm Ventures was in a three-way tie with Google Capital and DMG Information for most active overall corporate investor in real estate tech. Google’s investment arms, Google Capital and Google Ventures, are both active investors in real estate tech despite investing at different stages.

Most Active Corporate Real Estate Tech Investors 2010 – 2015 YTD (9/22/2015)
Rank	Investor
1	Qualcomm Ventures
1	Google Capital
1	DMG Information
1	Google Ventures
5	Mercury Capital
5	SanomaVentures
5	Ping An Ventures
5	Axiometrics
5	KDDI Open Innovation Fund
5	Baidu

Early-Stage Corporate Investors

Qualcomm and Google‘s venture arms are also among the top investors in early-stage real estate tech companies. Two-fifths of the early-stage investors listed below were headquartered outside the US, including Legend Capital in China and Japan-based Nissay Capital.

Most Active Early Corporate Real Estate Tech Investors 2010 – 2015 YTD (9/22/2015)
Rank	Investor
1	Qualcomm Ventures
1	Google Ventures
3	Legend Capital
3	Renren Lianhe Holdings
3	Nissay Capital
3	Axiometrics
3	YJ Capital
3	Circle Ventures
3	Michigan Economic Development Corporation
3	Comcast Ventures

Real Estate Tech By Geography

Nearly half or 49% of real estate tech deals involving corporates were completed outside the US, with more than one-fourth of these occurring in Japan and India.

Since 2010, 51% corporate deals done in real estate tech were to companies headquartered in the US. Japan and India round out the top 3 list for individual countries in which investments were completed. See the chart below for more information.

Want more data on real estate tech companies? Check out our venture capital database below.

Feature image credit: See Modern Britain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Houses_for_sale.jpg

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13 Of The Hottest Startups In HR Tech

OCTOBER 1, 2015

We used CB Insights' mosaic algorithm to take a look at some of the hottest startups in human resources technology., 

Human resources technology is a high-interest area for venture capital investment. Using CB Insights’ Mosaic algorithm, which combines public data and predictive analytics to assess the health of private companies, we identified some of the hottest HR tech startups.

HR tech companies offer powerful software tools to address some of businesses’ most aggravating problems: compliance, payroll, benefits, recruiting, and talent management. Below is our list of 13 prominent HR tech companies with high Mosaic scores, along with recent headlines about news, financings, and partnerships:

• Heading up our list is popular job-listing website Glassdoor, which provides job-seekers with in-depth information about prospective employers, including potential interview questions, pay, and workplace culture. Glassdoor most recently received a $70M growth equity round in January from investors including Google Capital and Tiger Global Management.

• Second on the list is cloud-based HR automation platform Zenefits, which raised a $500M funding round  at a $4.5B valuation in May from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and TPG Growth, among others.

• Third is HackerRank, a technical recruiting and interviewing platform that is aiming to be the “default resume” for developers. HackerRank most recently raised a second tranche of Series B funding which brought the total Series B funding from Battery Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Recruit Strategic Partners to $16.7M.

The top startups in HR Tech make products that span one or more of these three subcategories: operations management, recruiting, and talent management.

• Operations management: Companies like Zenefits provide services that allow business owners to automate payroll, compliance, benefits, and insurance processes.
• Talent management: Companies like  Namely, HireVue, and People Matter offer companies digital tools to monitor employee progress, provide real-time feedback, and increase the effectiveness of the review process.
• Recruiting: Companies like Glassdoor, Greenhouse, and Jobvite help companies source and narrow down candidates by providing centralized candidate databases, lines of communication to potential candidates, candidate relationship-management software, online screening services, and automated interviews.

Want more data around HR Tech? Login to CB Insights or sign up for free below.

https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/hottest-startups-hr-tech/

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Google Ventures Teardown: The Most Active Corporate Venture Firm Slows Down

Although a relatively new kid on the block, Google Ventures has become a prominent player in VC. We've updated our "teardown" of the firm's strategy and portfolio.

Founded in 2009, Google Ventures has quickly established itself as one of the more high-profile names in venture capital today and the most active firm in corporate venture capital.

In June 2014, we dove into the firm as part of our Google Ventures “teardown.” The original brief received lots of interest, including from Google Ventures Managing Partner and Uber investor David Krane:

Since then, Google Ventures has continued to invest at a rapid clip across tech and healthcare in areas including satellite data, cybersecurity, and telemedicine. It has also been bolstered by its participation in prominent financings and exits.

Using CB Insights, we took a fresh look at Google Ventures’ investment strategy and exit history.

Notes:

1. Where’s the data & viz from? 100% of the visualizations and data you see in this teardown are directly from the CB Insights platform’s Investor Analytics tool.
2. What’s a Teardown?  A product teardown is the act of disassembling a product to understand its parts, functionality, etc. An investor teardown is analogous. We’re trying to understand a firm and what makes it tick by analyzing data around their financing strategy, investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates and more.

We’ll discuss trends and highlights in Google Ventures portfolio over the past few years by analyzing the following dimensions:

• Recent financing activity
• Recent exit activity
• Notable partners
• Industry focus and strategy
• Geographic strategy
• Stage strategy
• New vs. follow-on investments
• Deal size
• Investment syndicate analysis

Google Ventures slows down

In 2015, Google Ventures completed its lowest number of new and follow-on deals in a year’s first half since 2012 and 39% less deals than in 2014’s first half, when the firm completed a record 50 new and follow-on deals.

A few of Google Ventures’ recent new deals include:

• Farmers Business Network’s $15M Series A in May, which Google Ventures led. Farmers Business Network is a data-driven farmer-to-farmer network.
• Kobalt’s $60M Series C round in February, with participation from MSD Capital and MSDC Management. London-based Kobalt provides music publishing, analytics and global music rights management services.
• Slack’s $120M Series D in October 2014 at a $1.1B valuation, co-led with Kleiner Perkins.

A few of Google Ventures’ recent notable deals include:

• Cloudera’s $160 million Series F round (which ballooned to $900M after an investment by Intel) in March alongside T. Rowe Price and an affiliate of MSD Capital, the private investment firm of Dell founder Michael Dell.
• Uber’s $1.2 billion Series D round of funding in June, the bulk of which came from mutual fund investors Fidelity Investments, BlackRock and Wellington Management. This is following their role in Uber’s $258 million Series C round last August; since then,Uber’s valuation has jumped from $3.5 billion to $18.2 billion.
• Flatiron Health’s Series B round in May, in which the firm led the $130 million financing. This deal represents Google Ventures’ largest investment in a health IT startup to date.

If you’d like to see more, we’d earlier detailed Google Ventures’ top 10 biggest deals (which has since changed given Uber’s latest funding).

Below is a graph of Google Ventures’ monthly investment participation (deals & funding) over time from their profile on CB Insights.

A diverse array of exits

Google Ventures’ portfolio exits highlight the diversity of the firm’s investments. Google Ventures has seen over 20 of its portfolio companies exit since last June.

Many of these have been smaller acquisitions of early-stage portfolio companies includingPredilytics, Objective Logistics, Rekindle and tenXer. But Google Ventures did notch two IPOs in Q4’14.

The firm’s recent exits have been all over the map, in terms of both industry and size.

Recent Notable Exits:

• FitStar was acquired by Fitbit in March for $18M. Google Ventures was a Seed investor in the workout app.
• OnDeck Capital went public in December at a $1.32B valuation. Google Ventures first invested in OnDeck’s Series D round at a $259M valuation.
• Hubspot went public in October at a $759M valuation. Google Ventures first invested in Hubspot’s Series D at a $200M valuation.

The firm’s exits with disclosed valuations are plotted on the below scatterplot taken from Google Ventures’ CB Insights profile.

Google Ventures’ partners

Here are a few of the big players in Google Ventures:

Bill Maris is Managing Partner at Google Ventures and is regarded as the founder of the corporate venture unit in 2009. His investments include Nest Labs, Uber, and 23andMe. He sits on the boards of Nest Labs and biotech company Adimab and has a particular interest in next generation life sciences and artificial intelligence, evidenced by his idea to create Calico, a biotech company focused on fighting human aging.

David Krane is Managing Partner at Google Ventures. His investments include Uber, Blue Bottle Coffee, CircleUp and Urban Engines. He previously served at Google’s director of Global Communications and Public Affairs.

Joe Kraus, co-founder of Excite and JotSpot, is General Partner with investments in the likes of Kabam, TuneIn, and Pocket. He has also been an active angel investor in several companies, such as LinkedIn, Aardvark, Kongregate, and OpenCandy. Kraus is on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Clean Power Finance, and MyLikes.

Rich Miner, co-founder of Android, is a General Partner and leads Google Ventures’ East Coast investment team. His investments include MessageMe, Enterproid, CustomMade, andHubspot. He sits on the boards for Crittercism, EnglishCentral, VigLink, and Recorded Future.

Krishna Yeshwant, leads Google Ventures’ investments in the digital health and healthcare sectors, where he sits on the boards for Flatiron Health, DNAnexus and One Medical Group.

Industry Focus and Strategy – Security & Digital Health Rising

Between 2010 and 2013, Google Ventures decreased its investment in social media companies and switched to more “enterprise-y” areas, as evidenced by its funding of Cloudera, DocuSign, and Hubspot. Between 2010 and 2013, Google Ventures also increased investment in video and health apps, as evidenced by their fundings of Vungle, Jumpcam, and FitStar Labs.

Flash-forward to 2014 and we see that Google Ventures has placed a large strategic emphasis on cybersecurity. As virtual threats increase, Google Ventures has bet on a number of upstarts including Duo Security, Ionic Security, Threatstream and Synack. Google Ventures has also made a broader push into digital health in recent quarters. Recent investments in this category include Transcriptic, Spruce Health and Flatiron Health.

Companies within the realm of “big data” and data analytics have also been a recent focus area for Google Ventures. Recent deals include big data exploration program MapD, IT operations analytics software Rocana, and secondary storage startup Cohesity.

Our Industry Heatmap below shows the distribution of investments in the internet software and services space by subindustry, with 2010-2011 on the left, 2012-2013 in the middle and all activity since on the right. Each box’s size represents deal count and color darkness represents funding volume.

Geographic Strategy – Increased Interest in New York

As in prior years, the majority of Google Ventures’ investments still take place in California. In 2012 and 2013, Google Ventures increased its investment pace in Massachusetts. The firm participated in rounds totaling $87 million across 10 deals in Massachusetts between 2010 and 2011, and this jumped to $212 million in 28 deals between 2012 and 2013.

More recently, Google Ventures has identified more opportunities in New York. In 2012 and 2013, Google Ventures participated in 13 New York deals including rounds to OnDeck Capital, YieldMo, and mParticle.

Since then, Google Ventures has doubled-down in New York, completing 16 deals. Most notably, the firm led a $130M investment to oncology data analytics firm Flatiron Health in May 2014. Google Ventures has also seeded nine New York startups including LedgerX,Abacus Labs, Clarifai, and Bowery. The corporate VC also participated in a $10M Series A toCockroach Labs.

Stage Strategy

While all stages of investment have seen increases over the last five years, the biggest growth has been in the early rounds, with 66% of deals taking place in Seed or Series A rounds over the past five years.  Google Ventures is the most active corporate venture capital firm at the seed stage so this is not entirely surprising.

The table below gives details on the firm’s deals in each stage:

New vs. Follow-On Investments

As Google Ventures’ portfolio matured since the firm’s launch in 2009, follow-on investments have surged. Google Ventures completed twice as many follow-on deals as it did new deals in Q2’15 — the highest percentage of follow-on deals it has ever done in a single quarter.

Many of these follow-on investments went to companies that had previously received Google Ventures backing at the seed stage, including Cambridge, Massachusetts-based data integration startup Tamr, mobile savings app HelloDigit, and consumer tracking companyFullStory.

The chart below from CBI’s Investor Analytics shows the proportion of Google Ventures’ new investments vs. follow-on investments in each quarter for the past five years.

Deal Size

Google Ventures has participated in a number of mega-financings — including those to Uber and Cloudera — which have served to drive up the median size of its deals. In Q2’15, Google Ventures’ median deal size swelled to $15M behind large rounds, including Cohesity’s $55M Series B and Slack’s $160M Series E. Over the last five years, Google Ventures has seen its median deal size surpass $10M in just three quarters.

Below is a graph from the Investor Analytics tab on CB Insights that shows trends in Google Ventures’ median deal size.

Investment Syndicate

Google Ventures often does deals with other big VC firms such as Kleiner Perkins (52 rounds across 33 companies), SV Angel (38 rounds across 34 companies), and Andreessen Horowitz (35 rounds across 26 companies). Several of Google Ventures’ top co-investors are also among its top deal flow sources, including Kleiner Perkins, First Round Capital, and SV Angel. Y Combinator is a top feeder of deal flow to Google Ventures.

If you’d like to read more about Google Ventures’ investment syndicate, check out our analysis here.

Notes:

1. 100% of the visualizations in this Teardown are from Investor Analytics. No MS Excel necessary.
2. Visualizations are all interactive so you can click and see underlying transaction details.
3. Visit Google Venture’s profile to check out these visualizations on your own.
4. Need an account? Sign up here.

Chandra V Pakala • 20 days ago

Google Strategy @ Ventures (Driverless Cars Concept @ Reality Life Business) : Just comedy Larry, Sergin & Eric : Nothing personal, just professional : It's stupid and foolish to venture into Driverless Cars @ CA Markets when only 10-20 % Drive to work, rather invested more ventures into the MN Markets of inconsistent Snow & Rain Falls, when these dumb fools don't know how to drive on the streets despite being very organized. I think we should leave these peoples to drive @ Madras, Hyderabad and Vizag Streets, there will be infinite accidents on the streets. RIGHTEOUSNESS.

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