New Delhi, June 19 -- Private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) deals exceeded $1 billion this week thanks to two big-ticket transactions in the artificial intelligence (AI) and data centre spaces, even as overall activity weakened, according to data gathered by VCCircle.
Data collated by VCCircle showed that 23 companies raised $1.17 billion in PE-VC transactions during the five-day period ending June 19, compared to 30 firms raising over $239 million the week before.
AI, data centres and renewables attracted big-ticket investments this week due to growing demand for compute and cloud infrastructure to run AI models, and the growing shift to green energy.
These deals include North America's largest pension fund Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB)'s $740.5 million investment in Indian data centre operator CtrlS Datacenters and Indian IT major HCL Tech's lead investment in Sarvam AI's $234 million Series B round, which fetched the generative AI startup a $1.5 billion valuation.
The next significant deal this week was SolarSquare, a renewable energy platform, which raised $53 million in its Series C round led by B Capital.
Petcare, wellness, and technology segments also attracted investments ranging from $10 million to $40 million, including Vetic, TruNativ, Pramaana Labs, Rusk Media, and Nazara Technologies.
Deal activity on the M&A front picked up, with eight transactions compared to five last week. Some transaction sizes remained undisclosed, however, the aggregate deal size could be higher.
Largest acquisition deal this week was struck by engineering and construction company Lloyds Engineering Works Ltd, which bought a controlling stake in steel infrastructure firm Steel Infra Solutions Company Ltd for $113.8 million.
Philippines' Ayala Group's listed renewable energy arm ACEN Corp this week agreed to sell up to a 49% stake in the Tejorupa solar-energy project in Rajasthan to Diamond India Renewables One B.V., a Netherlands-based affiliate of Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation. Terms of the transaction remained undisclosed.
French cosmetic giant L'Oreal's acquisition of a majority stake in Indian beauty and personal care firm Innovist was also a notable deal this week, though the terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Other important deals were student-mobility platform Crizac's acquisition of peer ForeignAdmits, medical imaging and health tech player UltraGreen.ai's takeover of IHLD MedTech, and toy maker KV Toys India's acquisition of Play Panda.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.