AV8 Ventures Launches a Second Fund With Backing From Allianz SE

Distributed by Business Wire
9th September 2021

PALO ALTO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–AV8 Ventures has launched with $180 mn a second fund to back and empower entrepreneurs who are commercializing emerging technologies in AI-driven health, mobility and enterprise. AV8 Ventures has invested in 20 companies with a focus on the US since its launch in 2018.

George Ugras, Managing Director at AV8 commented: “We are humbled by the continued support from Allianz and our founders who have chosen to partner with us. We will continue to focus on funding seed-stage start-ups modernizing enterprise, healthcare and financial services with deep technology. The additions to our team since the launch of our first fund with Baris Aksoy joining us from Google and Ruchita Sinha from Sanofi have brought us tremendous domain knowledge augmented by our venture advisors.”

“AV8 complements Allianz’s digital investment activities and plays an important role in our investment strategy by bringing insights into emerging, early-stage technologies in areas such as cybersecurity, healthcare and digitization. We look forward to deepening our partnership with AV8 and are excited about the start-ups this new fund will support,” said Ivan de la Sota, Chief Business Transformation Officer, Allianz SE.

Co-founder and CEO of Delfi Diagnostics Victor Velculescu stated, “Early diagnosis is the best way to beat cancer. We spun out Delfi to commercialize the first affordable and most accurate technology to meet this ambitious goal. We met AV8 early in our formation stages and have been impressed with the depth and sincerity of their engagement. They have helped us with our strategy, and have been true partners who share our vision for beating cancer.”

Chris McCormick, Founder and Chairman of PlanetIQ added, “We founded PlanetIQ to bring the most precise and abundant global data to date into weather and climate forecasting models. The team at AV8 understood our technology and value proposition of the impact in creating weather forecasts that are accurate days further into the future than currently capable, and in creating new applications that are not possible without our data. We’ve benefited greatly from having chosen them as one of our early investors and look forward to working closely with them as we commercialize our technology and bring precision to all things related to weather and climate.”

About AV8 Ventures

AV8 Ventures is an early stage focused venture fund that invests in intelligent enterprise, healthcare and fintech/insurtech start-ups. The fund was launched in 2018 with backing from Allianz SE and is based in Palo Alto, CA. AV8 is typically the first institutional investor in its partner companies and provides support to its founding entrepreneurs in establishing product-market fit, developing go-to-market capabilities, and architecting scalable business models. The AV8 team includes investing partners with operating experience in the relevant industries and a venture advisor network. Learn more about AV8 Ventures at www.av8.vc

About Allianz

The Allianz Group is one of the world’s leading insurers and asset managers with more than 100 million retail and corporate customers in more than 70 countries. Allianz customers benefit from a broad range of personal and corporate insurance services, ranging from property, life and health insurance to assistance services to credit insurance and global business insurance. Allianz is one of the world’s largest investors, managing 766 billion euros on behalf of its insurance customers. Furthermore, our asset managers PIMCO and Allianz Global Investors manage 1.7 trillion euros of third-party assets. Thanks to our systematic integration of ecological and social criteria in our business processes and investment decisions, we are one of the leading insurers in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. In 2019, over 147,000 employees achieved total revenues of 142 billion euros and an operating profit of 11.9 billion euros for the group.