Weekly People & Company News
- Jon Maier was added as chief ETF strategist by JPMorgan Asset Management. Maier will lead ETF Insights, a thought leadership program and resources for the ETF industry. Maier has held research-oriented roles for nearly 30 years. He previously served as CIO of ETFs for Global X. Prior to that, he was managing director, ETF strategist, at Merrill Lynch, where he oversaw management of $50 billion.
- Lee Becker, a Goldman Sachs veteran who was co-head of Hybrid Capital Americas in the firm’s asset and wealth management arm, has left after more than 17 years, according to Bloomberg News. Becker joined Goldman in 2006 and was named managing director in 2017. He is the latest in a series of departures from Goldman’s asset and wealth management arm.
- Dennis Kelly was appointed CEO of Arlington Capital Partners-backed Tyto Athene LLC, a federal systems integrator of digital transformation services. He will lead Tyto’s strategic growth efforts while also focusing on service delivery to its U.S. defense, national security, intelligence, space and public safety agency clients. Kelly was previously CEO of Eqlipse Technologies and president and COO of Centauri, both Arlington portfolio companies.
- Conway Bate was promoted to global head of capital formation by Hunter Point Capital, an investment firm providing capital services to alternative asset managers. Bate will lead the capital formation team. The group, which she has helped build since joining the firm in 2022, is responsible for capital raising and providing related counsel and support to the firm’s GP partners. Bate previously served as COO of the group.
- Melvin Hibberd was promoted to CIO by Hunter Point Capital, an investment firm providing capital services to alternative asset managers. Hibberd will oversee investments across the firm’s GP stakes and GPFS platforms, steering HPC’s investment strategy, processes, and portfolio construction. Hibberd joined HPC in 2021 as a managing director and head of the investment team.
- Vista Equity Partners is exploring options including a sale of LogicMonitor Inc. that could value the IT infrastructure monitoring platform at about $1.5 billion, including debt, Bloomberg News reported. LogicMonitor provides a cloud-based, AI-powered performance monitoring platform for enterprise IT, managed service providers and small and midsize businesses. Vista acquired LogicMonitor through its Vista Foundation Fund III for undisclosed terms in May 2018.
- Nordic Capital, an investor in technology and global payments, is joining Great Hill Partners as an investor in One Inc., a digital payments platform focused on the North American insurance industry. Great Hill Partners invested in One Inc. in 2020 and will retain an equal stake to Nordic Capital alongside a continuing investment from the company’s current management team.
- HarbourView Equity Partners, an alternative asset management company focused on investment opportunities in the sports, media and entertainment space, has secured approximately $500 million in debt financing through a private securitization backed by its catalog of music royalties. KKR led the financing. Investment accounts advised by Kuvare Asset Management also participated in the transaction. The financing comes on the heels of numerous deals, including its $300 million credit facility expansion announced in December 2023.
- HCAP Partners, a private equity firm, alongside healthcare execs Anthony DeSena and Roy Leitstein, has acquired Behavioral Medicine Associates, Workers Compensation Psychological Network and Reservoir Health, merging under PAX Health. The combination under the PAX Health umbrella creates a behavioral health business in the Northeastern U.S. Hamilton Lane joined HCAP in the transaction as a co-investor.
- Advent International is weighing a sale of CAES that could value the aerospace and defense technology company at more than $1 billion. The private equity firm is working with an advisor as it explores a range of strategic options for CAES. Formerly known as Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions, CAES provides products to the aerospace and technology industry. Advent acquired the business as part of its roughly $5.1 billion purchase of defense firm Cobham Plc, which was completed in 2020.
- Denali Growth Partners and Eight Roads Ventures co-led a $39M Series B funding round for HiLabs, a Bethesda, MD-based provider of AI-powered solutions to manage dirty data. F-Prime Capital also participated in the round. The company intends to use the funds to support continued enhancement of the technology, recruitment of talent and expansion of its product teams.
- Menlo Ventures led a $40M Series B funding round for Unstructured, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of tools to ingest and preprocess large language models (LLMs). Databricks Ventures, IBM Ventures and NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, among others, participated in the funding. Tim Tully of Menlo Ventures joined the board of directors as part of the investment, which brings the company’s total capital raised to $65M.
- Prime Movers Lab led a $80M Series A capital raise for CarbonCapture, a Los Angeles, CA-based direct air capture (DAC) company. Idealab X, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, and Neotribe Ventures also participated.
- Seven Seven Six led an $18M Seed funding round for Interlune, a Seattle, WA-based natural resources company. Aurelia Foundry Fund, Gaingels, Liquid 2 Ventures, Shasta Ventures, and a committed group of University of Michigan alumni participated in the round. The company intends to use the funds to further develop and operationalize technology to extract Helium-3 and other natural resources from the Moon.
- Revolution Growth, Eli Lilly & Company, Jeff Skoll, and EPIQ Capital Group, among others, backed a $111M Series A funding round for Zephyr AI, Inc., a MCLean. VA-based healthtech company that develops AI solutions for precision medicine. Led by Grant Verstandig, co-founder and executive chairman, and Jeff Sherman, co-founder, interim CEO, and CTO, Zephyr AI is developing improved data federation tools along with various machine learning algorithms in the areas of oncology and cardiometabolic disease.
