Weil advises INVEN and IRIS on USD 240 Series C in Forto

Frank­furt a. Main — The Frank­furt office of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP has advi­sed Inven Capi­tal SICAV, a.s. (“INVEN CAPITAL”) and Iris­Next Funds (“IRIS CAPITAL”) on their invest­ments in the Series C finan­cing round of Forto GmbH (“Forto”). — Both have alre­ady been inves­ted in Forto since the Series B finan­cing round led by INVEN CAPITAL in the summer of 2020. The $240 million funding round now led by Soft­bank (Vision Fund 2) included parti­ci­pa­tion from Citi Ventures, G Squared and other exis­ting inves­tors such as North­zone, Cherry Ventures and Unbound. With its latest round of funding, Forto has raised $360 million in capi­tal to date and is now valued at $1.2 billion.

Forto GmbH (form­erly Freight­Hub), based in Berlin, is a digi­tal logi­stics service provi­der that enables its custo­mers to digi­tally manage global supply chains from the manu­fac­tu­rer to the end customer.

INVEN CAPITAL is the venture capi­tal arm of the CEZ Group, whose invest­ment focus is on invest­ments in clean-tech and new-energy companies.

IRIS CAPITAL is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm specia­li­zing in the digi­tal economy. IRIS CAPITAL invests in compa­nies at various stages of growth, from start-ups to late-stage and growth play­ers. Iris­Next is a fund of IRIS CAPITAL, backed as inves­tors by leading compa­nies such as Orange, Publi­cis, Valeo and Bridge­stone, as well as finan­cial inves­tors and insti­tu­ti­ons such as Bpifrance and BRED Banque Populaire.

Weil’s Frank­furt office regu­larly advi­ses INVEN CAPITAL on its invest­ments, inclu­ding the recent finan­cing rounds at tado GmbH and Zolar GmbH, the sale of its stake in home battery storage provi­der sonnen to Shell Over­seas Invest­ment B.V., the invest­ment in start-up Cloud&Heat Tech­no­lo­gies GmbH and the recent finan­cing round at Sunfire GmbH.

The Weil tran­sac­tion team for this tran­sac­tion consis­ted of Frank­furt Corpo­rate Part­ner Dr. Chris­tian Tapp­ei­ner, Coun­sel Julian Schwa­ne­beck, Asso­ciate Dr. Khatera Zuschlag and Para­le­gal Nata­scha Späth (all Corpo­rate, Frankfurt).