Magenta Venture Partners, a Hertzliya, Israel-based venture capital firm, announced that it is closing $100 million for a new fund with an initial closing in October 2018. The final closing is expected to happen later this year. Magenta Venture Partners is an equal partnership between Japan-based investment company Mitsui & Co. and seasoned venture capital professionals Ori Israely and Ran Levitzky.
This fund will specialize in early-stage investments based in Israel along with Israeli-related technology startups across a number of sectors like automotive, mobility, artificial intelligence, smart cities, enterprise software, and fintech.
The four partners associated with this fund include Israely (formerly of Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and Giza Venture Capital), Levitzky (formerly of Viola Ventures), Hiroshi Takeuchi (Mitsui), and Atsushi Mizuno (Mitsui).
“Our name Magenta, is a blend of blue and red – the colors of the Israeli and Japanese flags,” said Israely in a statement. “Our fund is a financially focused, but we look to invest in startups that not only look for capital but also seek value driven by the team’s experience in Japan, EU and the USA. We also leverage our investors to analyze and validate investments, assist the portfolio, and help all the startups we engage during this process.”
Magenta Venture Partners also announced that it added Ron Shvili to its venture advisor board. Shvili is the former head of the technology center for 8200 unit and is currently the CTO and VP of Technology and Information Systems at Cellcom.
“Investors in Magenta Venture Partners include Mitsui & Co. Ltd. and Koito Manufacturing Co. Ltd. who are looking to work with the fund to identify innovative technologies in Israel” added Takeuchi. “Magenta will also work on introducing benefits of cooperation with such LPs to maximize return on investments, expose LPs to innovation generated by our portfolio companies and also from our deal flow.”
