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Switzerland-based seems to have, and the company’s innovative storage method made see enough potential profit to . (The company has raised other capital , including led by , subsidiary of . That deal will make sense shortly.)

For the Vision Fund, the deal size isn’t shocking; but what caught our eye is the technology selected. This is the fund’s first-ever investment into an energy company, according to a by Energy Vault.

Energy Vault is a change from Masayoshi Son and Company putting capital to work in on-demand companies, chips, or dog-walking, and we’re here for it.

Towering Possibilities

Here’s how the company’s Super Jenga (our name, not theirs) system works:

That is very smart? And simple? And pretty cool? And we suspect that it would look pretty neat in action. (TechCrunch of the system.)

Energy storage is an active sector, one that has as our needs to capture, and later access, power have risen; as the world moves towards renewable energy sources, some of which are more cyclical in nature than traditional power generation methods, being able to save generated power is a key piece of work.

To demonstrate the scale of the need for Energy Vault’s product, or one like it, read discussing how Utah may store air power in salt:

One hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, a giant mound of salt reaches thousands of feet down into the Earth. It’s thick, relatively pure and buried deep, making it one of the best resources of its kind in the American West.

Two companies want to tap the salt dome for compressed air energy storage, an old but rarely used technology that can store large amounts of power.

Compared to that, Energy Vault’s methods look downright simple. Let’s move on now to the Vision Fund and its recent deal flow and performance (both the good and bad), leaving you with the point that Energy Vault is incorrectly named. It should be called “Energy Tower.”

Vision Fund 2

Aside from investing in every late-stage company you can name, is looking to raise more money of its own. The SoftBank Vision Fund II plans to land somewhere around $108 billion, several billion dollars larger than its older sibling.

The pace and size of investments from ���Ǵڳٵ����԰�’s first fund was hard to wrap our heads around — and, apparently, investors struggled as well. Reports in June detailed that the second Vision Fund was having a hard time raising cash to fuel its investing machine. However, a month later, SoftBank said it had landed and on its list of LPs for the second Vision Fund.

It was a welcome boost for SoftBank, as it raises new billions, that its first fund had a good recent quarter. The firm saw liquidity, as well as “unrealized valuation gains” that looked strong. The results weren’t too surprising, considering some of its portfolio companies’ recent successes (think direct listing, fundraising rush, and recent investing news), but they were notable all the same. And while we poke at ���Ǵڳٵ����԰�’s invest-in-everything strategy, keep in mind its numbers showed specific strengths in its enterprise and consumer deals.

When SoftBank does launch its second, gigantic fund, we’ll see a second wave of investments by the behemoth. Despite its string epic check size and deal stamina, the company does have a few investments that could serve as learning lessons for the second fund

Market Wobbles

First up, Uber, a huge Vision Fund investment that had a disappointing start to its life as a public company and still is struggling.

The most recent news from the ride-hailing giant comes from its recent second quarter earnings report. The global transportation company – which SoftBank put billions into, making it – had less revenue than expected and larger losses than anticipated.

Uber must be feeling deflated, to say the least.

SoftBank, in its earnings report, explained that it had an “unrealized loss totaling ¥195,326 million was recorded for the decrease in the fair values of investments in Uber and others.” That means Uber isn’t the only Vision Fund deal that appears weak.

Looking to the future, WeWork, which filed its S-1 publicly yesterday, appears dangerously unprofitable as well (more here). And SoftBank has invested at least $6 billion into the co-working space business over time, and at one point .

But while its Uber bet hasn’t performed well thus far, and the company’s WeWork stake is looking risky, the Vision Fund’s huge (paper) win from its DoorDash bet could allow the investing giant to keep making big bets on unprofitable companies. And, perhaps, cut checks into different sorts of corporate growth risk, deals like this week’s Energy Vault deal.

Energy Jenga!

Illustration: .

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ASV expects to invest checks up to $2 million in 15-20 companies, through the new fund, , founder and managing partner at the fund told Crunchbase News.

So far, the early stage fund has made 13 investments in 8 startups, across industries in B2B software, mobile, and technology-enabled services. Its first fund was $16.4 million dollars.

For an early stage fund, ASV has a pattern of doing follow-up rounds. It’s invested in multiple rounds for , and .

“We take a concentrated approach to how we work with our companies,” Chattopadhyay said during a phone call. “Both to make sure we write large checks and continue to support each follow-on round.”

Chattopadhyay pointed to ACV Auctions, which works with car dealers within the automotive industry, as an example of that payoff.

He says ACV received a tremendous amount of interest from Silicon Valley but chose to go with Armory Square Ventures for a culture shift.

“This company focuses on automotive dealers, and many Silicon Valley (venture capitalists) are used to taking Uber or Lyft or riding Tesla,” said Chattopadhyay. Automotive dealers are not a part of their general day to day, he added.

In terms of exits, one of ASV’s investments, , was acquired by for

Chattopadhyay explained that some of the key catalysts that existed in Silicon Valley when it was just bubbling up also exist in upstate NYC: university anchors like Cornell or Syracuse, angel investors, serial entrepreneurs, multiple business exits.

The problem, as shown by a conducted by a nonprofit that wants to boost entrepreneurship in the region, is startups in the upstate New York region still need significant capital to scale adequately.

The survey found that “scalable firms identified $624 million in equity capital requirements for creating over 6,000 new jobs” in the region.

ASV estimates that it’s created 350 jobs since starting.

Most early stage funds in the region, whether university affiliated are not, are capped at $5 million. That said, late-stage capital does exist: , a fund associated with Cornell University that focuses on all funding stages, has raised $137 million in its time.

So factoring in costs of living and available capital etc., a $3 to $5 million round in upstate New York is comparable to a $6 to $10 million round in Silicon Valley, Chattopadhyay said.

On the Silicon Valley scale, a fund of this size isn’t unusual. But in upstate New York, $31 million has the power to turn heads, and companies.

Illustration:

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article said that ASV invested in 13 startups. A correction has been issued, as ASV made 13 investments across 8 startups. 

We’re not talking about a high-brow restaurant, or even a . We’re talking about McDonald’s drive thrus.

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Yesterday, the fast food giant announced it will acquire , an artificial intelligence company based in New York and Tel Aviv,.The acquisition will give McDonalds data on what purchases are most popular with consumers, and will offer a more “personal, customized” experience, .

Prior to being acquired, Dynamic Yield had $83.3 million in funding and $17.8 million in revenue, according to . Its investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Marker and Naver Corp. Its co-founder, Liad Agmon, is also the founder of , an intelligent social search engine in Tel Aviv, Israel.

McDonald’s said it has tested this technology in several U.S. restaurants in 2018, and will continue the roll out in 2019. It is adding to a string of data-focused features in its service: an app, mobile order, digital menus and self-order kiosks.

While artificial intelligence and a Big Mac might seem like an unlikely pairing, , a social entrepreneurship professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said the decision makes sense. For McDonald’s, at least.

“This is not signifying product innovation,” he told Crunchbase News, saying that the company is looking for tools to increase sales, but not change health of the offerings.

Taparia, who co-founded , explained that as health trends continue to skew away from fast food, McDonald’s is under pressure to grow its top line. This acquisition will give the company data to increase sales at the point-of-purchase, so goal accomplished.

Unfortunately customers don’t regularly come to McDonald’s for healthy offerings, he said. So the data will tell McDonalds to push items like fries or burgers vs salads. From a business standpoint, he said it gives McDonald’s the green light to suggest more so-called junk food to customers but rationalized in a “subtle, scary way.”

From its end, McDonald’s is showing that it is taking some steps in both the healthier, and more innovative direction. , it promised fresh, real beef in all restaurants. That same year, it its happy meal.

Steve Easterbrook, the CEO of McDonald’s, told that the acquisition will let the company have real-time information to connect the kitchen to customer tastes. The “predictive analytics” he said could help cut down waste.

For its part, McDonald’s said the acquisition will help it address “ever-changing consumer trends” and provide “greater convenience” for customers.  

McDonald’s will likely draw some interesting information about customer behaviors and taste buds from this acquisition. But, as the AI bandwagon continues to super-size, whether or not data-focused innovation is critical for the life of the fast food giant will be revealed by time.

Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias

This is the firm’s third fund dedicated solely to these university startups, bringing its total assets to $600 million. Like the two previous funds, the investment will be used to “invest in companies developing technology discovered in the labs of its partner institutions,”

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According to , a principal on OUP’s tech investment team, their fund has slightly different requirements for investment, versus other venture capital firms.

Most startups start with a market problem, develop meaningful tech, and solve said problem. With research startups, “you’re kind of going backwards,” on that process, Lee said.

You’re first developing a technology, then you’re trying to solve a problem, Lee explained. They’re taking a chance on those kind of startups. And since 2009, they’ve taken a bunch of chances by investing in 140 startups, .

OUP works with 98 universities, research institutions, and accelerators in the U.S. and abroad, including Harvard University, New York University, Michigan State University, Rutgers and Tel Aviv University (others found ). They invest in an even split of life sciences and tech companies. The fund shares its investment profit with the universities the startups are born out of.

Some of its include, a biotech company,, a genetic medicine company, and , a biopharmaceutical company.

While this fund will be used to continue to invest in companies, like all venture capital firms, OUP will continue to pour time into companies that aren’t quite up and running yet, Lee said.

OUP also advises professors, graduate students or academics eyeing the idea of starting their own company, he said. This means connecting them to co-founders or giving them knowledge on how to start a company.

There’s a value in investing in university spinouts, before they fully materialize: it will catalyze deal flow – and be the “tide that lifts all boats,” Lee said.

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