When Arvind Purushotham decided to leave the Sand Hill stalwart Menlo Ventures in 2010 to start a new VC arm for Citibank, he joked with friends that he was going from an operation with 25 people to one with four more zeroes in its workforce. 15 years—and more than 200 investments and 30 exits—later, he has built one of the more formidable Wall Street corporate venture outfits at a moment when frontier technology like AI and blockchain threaten to upend financial services. Citi Ventures has already made 26 investments this year, one of its most active on record.
Corporate venture capital, or CVC, has always been a strange corner of tech investing. While operations like Citi Ventures still have a mandate to generate returns through IPOs and M&A, they are also tasked with investing in startups that could offer some strategic support to the parent company. Citi didn’t share the assets under management for the fund, nor how much it invests every year, but did confirm the capital is from the bank’s balance sheet.
