Here are some of the most prominent venture capital and merger and acquisition news items from the past month. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s VC or M&A activity in our monthly Money Moves section, or if you have any tips on that activity, please send the information to Dan Meyer ([email protected]).

VMware, Dell Technologies Reach Spinoff Deal

Dell Technologies said it will spin off its 81% stake in VMware. The deal will create two separate companies but preserve Dell and VMware’s “strategic partnership,” VMware CFO and interim CEO Zane Rowe said in a statement.

Under the terms of the agreement, VMware will pay a cash dividend between $11.5 billion and $12 billion to all VMware shareholders ranging from $27.43 to $28.62 per share, based on outstanding shares as of March 16. Dell Technologies will also receive a dividend of between $9.3 billion and $9.7 billion that the company will use to pay down its debt.

The two companies also finalized a commercial agreement that they say “preserves and enhances their strategic partnership to deliver joint customer value.”

The spinoff from Dell will give VMware the freedom to execute on its vision to create a unified management layer via software across all clouds and hardware infrastructure, Rowe said in a statement. Additionally, it will simplify the company’s capital structure and governance model.

Cisco Will Spend $100M on Climate Technologies, Projects

The Cisco Foundation committed to spending $100 million over 10 years on grants and investments that slow the effects of climate change.

The Cisco-funded endowment will go to nonprofit grants and impact investments that support early-stage technologies and organizations focused on reducing carbon emissions, or educating the community about climate action, among other sustainability efforts.

The new $100 million pledge is consistent with Cisco’s ongoing commitment to sustainability, Cisco CFO Scott Herren told SDxCentral. “Everything from how we design products to be far more power efficient to the way we think about our supply chain and the things we do to reduce waste, energy consumption, and water consumption through the supply chain, to the way we run our own facilities,” he said. "Having a high degree of focus on sustainability is in the ethos of the company. We have the skill sets and the resources to drive the next wave of innovation in sustainability — it just makes sense.”

Druva Dons New $147M Investment, $2B Valuation

Druva secured a $147 million investment in its eighth funding round, pushing the cloud data protection and backup startup’s valuation to more than $2 billion.

Now a unicorn two-times over, the Sunnyvale, California-based firm has secured $475 million in total venture backing. And for good reason: cloud-based data protection, backup, and disaster recovery software and services are hot – red hot. Look at competitor Cohesity for example, which is now valued at $3.7 billion, up from $2.5 billion last year, according to Bloomberg.

The funding announcement comes on the heels of a new collaboration with Dell Technologies to tackle the data protection gap in popular cloud-based application platforms. The Dell EMC PowerProtect Backup Service packs Druva’s cloud-based backup platform that includes disaster recovery, archiving, analytics, and visibility across environments.

Movers and Shakers

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) pledged $100 billion over the next three years to expand its semiconductor fabrication capacity, according to a recent Bloomberg report.

Hitachi penned a deal to acquire digital engineering services firm GlobalLogic for $9.6 billion.

Open source security startup WhiteSource raised $75 million in Series D funding that its CEO said will allow it to acquire other companies and expand its application security platform.

Thoma Bravo entered into a definitive agreement to acquire cybersecurity and compliance company Proofpoint.

Redis Labs closed $110 million in financing led by Tiger Global.

Artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and machine learning (ML) vendor Uniphore received a $140 million boost in a Series D funding round led by Sorenson Capital Partners.

Accenture acquired cloud analytics firm Core Compete for an undisclosed amount.

Digital investment trust Digital 9 acquired Aqua Comms.

Microsoft reached a $19.7 billion, all-cash deal to buy Nuance Communications, which provides speech recognition software for health care providers, in a move to boost its industry-specific cloud services. Microsoft also acquired Kinvolk for an undisclosed amount.

DoControl scored a $10 million Series A funding round led by RTP Ventures.

Nvidia’s $40 billion acquisition of British chip designer Arm Holdings ran into some trouble. The United Kingdom announced it would intervene in the deal on national security grounds, Bloomberg reports.

Upsolver raised a $25 million Series B funding round led by Scale Venture Partners.

Accenture announced its intent to acquire Openminded, a France-based cybersecurity services company. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Cloud-based open source developer platform Gitpod bagged $13 million in financing led by General Catalyst.

Identity verification provider Veriff secured $69 million in Series B financing. The company has now raised a total of $92.8 million to date.

Container security unicorn Sysdig bagged a hefty $188 million funding round. The Series F round, announced a little over a year after the company’s $70 million Series E, pushed Sysdig’s valuation to $1.19 billion.

AppOmni closed a $40 million Series B funding round led by Scale Venture Partners.

Kyligence scored $70 million in Series D funding led by SPDB International.

Network lifecycle automation vendor Infovista completed its acquisition of Empirix.

Deep Instinct raised $100 million in Series D funding led by BlackRock.

Nano Dimension signed a definitive agreement to acquire DeepCube.

Cloud-native endpoint management provider Automox bagged $110 million in Series C funding led by Insight Partners.

Vectra AI joined the cybersecurity unicorn pack with a $130 million funding round on a $1.2 billion valuation. The late-stage funding round, led by Blackstone Growth, brings Vectra’s total raised to $350 million.

Hack The Box announced a $10.6 million Series A investment round of  led by Paladin Capital Group.

Syntax acquired Linke, a provider of SAP on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the Iberian, French, and Nordic markets. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Keyfactor and PrimeKey sealed the deal on a merger of the two companies under the Keyfactor brand and secured a $125 million growth infusion, led by Insight Partners.

IBM entered into an agreement to acquire myInvenio, a process mining software company based in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The vendor also penned a deal to acquire Turbonomic, an application resource management (ARM) and network performance management (NPM) software provider based in Boston.

RapidAPI secured $60 million in Series C funding led by Green Bay Ventures.

Global investment firm KKR announced its intent to acquire hybrid IT services provider Ensono.

Stockholders approved AMD's pending acquisition of Xilinx.

Koch Strategic Platforms signed an agreement for a strategic minority equity investment in Mavenir.

Security analytics and automation provider Rapid7 acquired Velociraptor for an undisclosed amount.