Pitango Venture Capital, established in 1993, is Israel's largest
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...
fund with over $1.8 billion under management. Pitango is focused on seed, expansion and late stage companies in core technologies, consumer, and Life Sciences. The firm's investors include
Time Warner
Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States.
It was originally established in 1972 by ...
,
Citigroup
Citigroup Inc. or Citi (Style (visual arts), stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services corporation headquartered in New York City. The company was formed by the merger of banking ...
,
Eastman Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
,
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
and
HarbourVest Partners
HarbourVest Partners is a private equity fund of funds and one of the largest private equity investment managers globally. The firm invests in all types of private equity funds, including venture capital and leveraged buyout funds, and also dire ...
.
History
The fund was founded as Polaris Venture Capital in 1993 by Rami Kalish, as part of a government initiative named the Yozma program ("Initiative" in Hebrew); which offered attractive tax incentives to any foreign venture-capital investments in Israel and offered to double any investment with funds from the government.
In 1996, Kalish was joined by Chemi Peres, son of former Israeli president
Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres (; he, שמעון פרס ; born Szymon Perski; 2 August 1923 – 28 September 2016) was an Israeli politician who served as the eighth prime minister of Israel from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996 and as the ninth president of ...
, to create Polaris Fund II, which raised more than $100 million. Polaris II invested in 35 high-tech companies. Some were partially funded by another Israeli VC firm, Eucalyptus Ventures. When the investments proved successful, Polaris II and Eucalyptus merged into Fund III in early 2000.