A Letter to Our Intel Capital Portfolio CEOs
To Our Portfolio Company CEOs:
First off, I want to thank you for your trust and partnership. Last year was a challenging year across the globe, with the COVID-19 pandemic, with political and social unrest and division, and with having to change the way we live, work and come together. But never before have we witnessed the importance of technology innovation at so many levels.
Your hard work, tough choices and dedication to your companies are remarkable.
While we cannot meet at the Intel Capital Global Summit this year, I want to share some highlights. Despite the challenges, Intel Capital committed more than $735 million in 2020 to companies around the world, across all stages – from seed to growth.
- In venture stage deals, we led two-thirds of our new deals, and our team is all in to help our companies grow. We welcomed 35 new CEOs and their teams to the portfolio and invested in 45 follow-on deals.
- In relation to diverse and inclusive teams, approximately 25% of our new venture stage deals and more than 30% of our new venture stage dollars committed were made in startups led by diverse leaders. We believe diverse and inclusive teams drive strong innovation and robust decision-making. Last summer we published a five-year commitment that 15% of our total new deals will be led by Black founders. At the end of 2020, 9% of our new venture deals and 15% of our venture dollars committed were in companies led by Black founders. We know there is more progress to be made and we will continue to encourage, foster and invest in diverse and inclusive teams.
- We exceeded our goal to bring Intel senior engineers to help accelerate your solutions, and we extended our business development programs to help take your innovations into the hands of more enterprises around the world and reduce your time to market. Working alongside your teams to help your companies grow is one of Intel Capital's differentiators of which we are most proud.
We are off to a strong start in 2021. With great enthusiasm, this week we welcomed our new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, who spent the first 30 years of his career at Intel in technology leadership roles and joins from VMware, where he was the CEO. In November, we also welcomed Intel's new senior vice president and chief strategy officer, Saf Yeboah-Amankwah, and Intel Capital became a part of the Corporate Strategy organization.
Personally, I want to share that I have been appointed to managing partner and head of Intel Capital. I have been a member of the investment committee for the past several years and am humbly awed by the talent of our entrepreneurs and our team.
The whole team and I look forward to continuing to help you succeed. Intel Capital's mission of supporting and investing in entrepreneurs to build world-changing technologies remains a driver of Intel's strategy and growth. You are all part of our story, and we are excited about the chapters ahead. Please reach out to me or any of us if there is more we can do for you. I look forward to what we will achieve together.
Anthony Lin
Managing Partner, Head of Intel Capital
