With a business empire that spans real estate, retail and electricity, Li Ka-Shing is among the wealthiest individuals in the world. And over the past few years, Li has built an equally diversified portfolio of private company investments through his personal investment firm Horizons Ventures. 2013 saw the firm invest in 22 disclosed deals, a 450% increase versus 2010.
Given Horizon’s increased investment activity and some big exits already (Facebook, Waze, DeepMind Technologies), what and where is the firm investing in?
Horizons Ventures Financing Trend
Since the start of 2009, Li’s Horizons Ventures has participated in 57 disclosed deals totaling $438M. Among its recent portfolio investments are wearable tech companies Misfit Wearables and InteraXon, bitcoin payment processing startup BitPay and plant-based food startup Hampton Creek Foods.
Horizons Ventures Financing Trend By Stage
Horizons has primarily focused on getting in early, as Seed VC and Series A deals comprise 60% of its investment activity since 2009. Among its seed investments in the last year were artificial intelligence travel startup Desti and big data CRM platform Rubikloud. Li was also the sole seed investor in Summly back in 2011, the news reader app acquired by Yahoo and founded by teen programmer Nick D’Aloisio. Nearly all of the rest of Horizons’ deals during the period came at the mid-stage.
Horizons Ventures Financing Trend By Geography
While Horizon’s investment firm is based in Hong Kong, Horizons’ deal activity has been primarily split among Israel and the U.S. 28% of its deals went to Israeli-based companies including to Onavo and Waze, acquired by Facebook and Google respectively. The chart below highlights Horizons’ top U.S. states and international countries by deal totals.
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