Despite a big slowdown in new investments in August and September, Salesforce Ventures seems to be in lockstep with the global venture community. We take a look at recent Venture Capital activity overall and dive into some of the latest investments made by Salesforce Ventures.
Salesforce Ventures activity in Q3'22
In August and September, they made a total of 8 investments, mostly in early-stage companies.
This is in contrast to their historical approach, which is later stage investing in companies that have found product-market fit and could potentially become strategic partners to Salesforce (for example, Snowflake). All but 1 of their August/September investments were at the Seed or Series A stage, which we've seen more of across the investing community since valuations of later stage companies skyrocketed to unreasonable levels over the past 2 years.
Interestingly, 2 of their investments were into Salesforce Consulting Firms, which they do periodically - Thunder and Uptima. Perhaps Salesforce is looking at the broader economic climate and rather than placing bets elsewhere, they are focused on enabling their own ecosystem of product and services firms.
Salesforce Ventures activity in October 2022
So far, they have only made one new investment in Q4'22, participating in the $100m Series E Round at Airwallex.
This is the type of investment that has a bit less strategic value to Salesforce but seems to be a legitimate financial bet to capitalize on the new wave of globalization we're experiencing post-pandemic. As company workforces become increasingly global (even at the startup level), dealing with financial infrastructure across all countries you do business can be cumbersome and Airwallex provides a turnkey solution to manage things like payments, borderless credit cards, expense management, and more.
