FB Roundup the family office of Paul Allen, the Tanoto family, Bernard Arnault
Family office of Paul Allen invests in Picnic
Cercano Management, the investment firm launched inside the family office of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is the lead investor in the latest round of funding for food-production automation company Picnic.
Picnic raised $5 million from a group which also included new investor Unlock Venture Partners, as well as existing investors Thursday Ventures, Flying Fish Ventures, and Creative Ventures.
The firm said that the new round of funding would support Picnic's mission to enhance customer productivity and help businesses in various industries embrace automation for increased efficiency. The capital will be used to scale operations, ramp up production, accelerate delivery capabilities, and meet increasing demand for its innovative food automation solutions across North America.
Picnic's customer base already includes a diverse range of high-volume locations, from universities, stadiums, and big-box retailers to commissaries, pizzerias, and the US military. The Picnic Pizza Station (PPS) enables these customers to overcome industry challenges like rising labour costs, productivity shortfalls, and food waste. Through automation, Picnic allows businesses to reallocate labour, reduce waste, enhance consistency, and boost employee and customer satisfaction.
Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates and later became a philanthropist and sports team owner, died in October 2018. Forbes estimates his net worth at $20.3 billion.
Following his death, Allen's sister Jody Allen was named executor and trustee of all of Paul Allen's estate. The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation was founded in 1988 by brother and sister and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.
Tanoto family linked to deforestation in Borneo
An investigation by The Gecko Project and Bloomberg has accused Sukanto Tanoto’s Royal Golden Eagle (RGE), an Indonesian group with businesses in pulp and paper, palm oil and energy, of operating a network of “shadow companies” that allow it to evade its own sustainability commitments.
RGE has denied all of the charges. In a statement, it said: "The claims of any such links of ownership or control are unfounded, unsupported and untrue."
Royal Golden Eagle, one of the world’s largest producers of pulp and paper, made a high-profile commitment to keep rainforests standing, turning its back on years of unsustainable practices. The investigation has alleged that the group is behind a string of secretive companies that have been clearing large swathes of orangutan habitat in Borneo.
The investigation found a close link between RGE and Borneo Hijau Lestari (BHL) which has consistently ranked among Indonesia’s top deforesters for pulp and paper in recent years, destroying swathes of rainforest and the habitat of the critically endangered Bornean orangutan.
One of BHL’s subsidiaries – Industrial Forest Plantation (IFP) – has destroyed an area of forest a third of the size of New York City, according to satellite imagery analysis by deforestation monitoring consultancy TheTreeMap.
The roots of RGE date back to more than 50 years ago when Tanoto opened a spare parts supply shop known as Toko Motor. His Tanoto Foundation was founded in 1981 by Sukanto Tanoto and Tinah Bingei Tanoto. Forbes estimates the family’s net worth to be around $3 billion.
Bernard Arnault makes AI bet
Bernard Arnault’s Aglae Ventures has backed the Series A round funding of New York-based AI startup Attention which uses customer conversations to drive sales.
Attention has raised $14 million in Series A funding which was led by early-stage venture capital firm Alven, with participation from Eniac, 645 Ventures, Frst, and Liquid2 as well as Aglae Ventures.
Founded by repeat entrepreneurs and former competitors, Anis Bennaceur and Matthias Wickenburg, Attention addresses a critical need in the market: enabling revenue teams to unlock and utilise the data hidden in customer interactions. Traditional methods of capturing and analysing this data are expensive, error-prone and incomplete. Attention automates the process, claiming to offer sales teams a powerful tool to close more deals using the voice of the customer.
Attention will use the new funding to fulfil market demand and expand its team while continuing to invest in product and engineering to solidify its leadership in the AI-driven sales market.
“Automating CRM entry out of customer conversations and writing follow-up emails was just the beginning. There is so much more to do out of these precious interactions,” says Bennaceur, Attention’s co-founder and chief executive.
As we reported last week, Arnault is currently involved in taking a majority stake in second-division football club Paris FC, as the billionaire clan moves into sports.
Under the terms of the deal, the Arnault family will take a stake of around 55% through its holding company Agache, before buying out club chairman Pierre Ferracci’s 30% holding in 2027.
At the end of June, CampdenFB reported that Arnault had promoted Frédéric, the fourth of his five children, to replace Nicolas Bazire as managing director of Financiere Agache, the family holding company that controls LVMH.
