CIBC Innovation Commits New $1.5 Billion to Venture Capital

CIBC Innovation Banking, part of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), has allocated an additional $1.5 billion of growth capital to support later-stage startups.

CIBC Innovation Banking’s (CIBCI) new capital commitment follows the  October 2021 creation of a $450 million fund dedicated to investing in Canadian and U.S.-based venture capital and growth equity funds. All totaled, CIBCI now has $6 billion in loan commitments allocated to the venture capital sector – ranging from early-stage to those with an enterprise value of over $10 billion – and is the number two lender to U.S. Series A-C companies.

CIBCI’s new initiative will invest from $50 million to $100 million in later-stage, venture-backed companies located in North America, the UK, and Europe that are active in the software, life sciences, healthcare and cleantech industries.

CIBCI sees its non-dilutive and founder-friendly capital filling a gap in the slowing venture capital space.

“Startup financing may be slowing down, but we are committed to continue to deploy capital so that later-stage companies can continue to embrace opportunities to achieve their ambitions, despite these choppy equity markets,” said Mark McQueen, the president and executive managing director at CIBCI. “Our team has financed firms through a lot of tough periods for our sector: the dot-com bubble burst, the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This is a time when experience and market heft are crucial.”

CIBCI’s team has financed companies such as Crunchbase, Lightspeed, and TigerConnect and generated more than nine IPOs to date. Among those is Expensify, which went public on the Nasdaq in November 2021.

“We chose to work with CIBCI because they were so familiar with our needs and so flexible in trying to come up with a structure that accommodated our unique business model. At every step of the process, they were so supportive and so creative that we just realized, well – we’ve got a partner for life here,” said David Barrett, the CEO and founder of Expensify.

CIBC Innovation Banking is headquartered in Toronto with additional Canadian offices in Montreal and Vancouver, nine offices in the United States, and one office in London.

© 2022 Venture Capital Investor | June 28, 2022