Blackstone and Goldman Sachs Asset Management this summer bought a minority stake in Dipanjan “DJ” Deb’s Francisco Equity Partners. Francisco Partners est. 2000 operates in London and San Francisco, and is a tech investor.
This year they put $500m in LegalZoom jointly with GPI Capital, Franklin Templeton and Neuberger Berman. Francisco Partners also owns Bomgar, a global leader in privileged access managment (PAM) solutions, who recently acquired BeyondTrust, a specialist in privilege-centric security.
Francisco Equity Partners also happens to own NSO, an Israeli cybersecurity expert group (with Unit 8200 background) that created “the world’s most invasive mobile spy kit” (Pegasus), and exclusively sells it to military and homeland security organizations around the world. NSO has been in the news rather frequently these days, in regard to Saudi Arabia, Mexico and other countries that have been on the front pages.
It’s a way for asset managers to be close to but at arm’s length to some of the most problematic/exciting technology in existence.
Not unlike Point 72, when they lifted out the CIA’s AI experts to start their AI venture group, Point 72 Ventures.
P72C focuses on financial services, artificial intelligence and enterprise technologies – “We invest in AI, machine learning, and data – the change agent for all industries.”
Stevie Cohen hired Matthew Granade to run P72C, who previously co-founded Domino Data Lab and served as Co-Head of Research for Bridgewater Associates (publishing the “daily observations”).
He also lifted Sri Chandrasekar, and Dan Gwak from In-Q-Tel, the strategic investment arm of the CIA and the U.S. Intelligence Community. At In-Q-Tel, Sri led Lab41, an AI-focused Lab that built and delivered solutions to some of the Intelligence Community’s toughest problems. Before Lab41, Sri led the Analytics practice at In-Q-Tel.
Dan was a Partner on the Investment Team at In-Q-Tel, where he oversaw enterprise analytics and infrastructure companies whose technologies were impactful to the mission of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Getting involved.
