SBI Investment,Inc(Head office: Minato-ku,Tokyo; Representative Director and President: Katsuya Kawashima) and astamuse (Head office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Ayumu Nagai) announced today that they have agreed to form a business alliance in areas of sourcing and supporting investment in CVC* businesses.

SBI Investment has been engaged in managing CVC funds with major corporates, and has been supporting open innovation activities through investing in and developing venture companies. In order to further expand the investment support function of the CVC business and support more comprehensive open innovation activities, we have entered into a business alliance with astamuse, which contains information that can be used in a wide range of fields such as new business ideas, market analysis, technology utilization, business alliances and M&A, commercialization support, and management decision-making. Through this alliance, we will be able to comprehensively support more customers’ open innovation activities and enable them to create even more innovation.

As an investment support function of the CVC business operated by SBI Investment, astamuse looks to provide information of the newest business models in various growth areas around the world, source the right startup companies and university laboratories, support hands-on investment, provide technology and intellectual property information necessary to build R&D strategies for SBI’s portfolio companies, information on growth markets where these technologies and ideas can be developed, information on potential partners, and information on major companies with potential exits, by utilizing the world’s largest databases owned by SBI Investment. In addition, by visualizing the information on each growth area and social issues (SDGs), the investors investing in the CVC fund will be able to use the information to formulate medium-term and long-term management plans, to create synergies in R&D strategies, to communicate internally and externally, and to build consensus. Through this alliance, astamuse is hoping that the information provided by astamuse will be used by more corporate investment businesses to further evolve the new business proposals and innovation creation support that astamuse has been providing to date based on data, with the corporate vision of “enhancing humanity’s ability to realize itself.

※Acronym for Corporate Venture Capital. It is an investment in a venture company by an operating company.

About SBI Investment

Since its establishment in 1999, SBI Investment has invested 452.8 billion yen(as of June 30, 2019) in 909 domestic and foreign venture companies in growth areas such as IT, bio-healthcare, environment and energy, fintech, AI, and blockchain, and has produced 150 of these companies in the form of IPOs and M&As. In the CVC business, we have established a CVC fund with a major operating company and manage seven companies with a total of 50 billion yen in CVC funds and engage in venture investment and development activities. We provide full support for corporate ventures in all phases from corporate discovery to due diligence, investment development, and exit, and work to create innovation through collaboration between operating companies and venture companies.