Microsoft Ventures rebrands as M12

Microsoft has announced that it has renamed its venture capital (VC) arm, changing it from Microsoft Ventures to M12, two years after the official launch of the business unit.

The name change comes to reduce any existing confusions, with Microsoft Ventures having initially been the name for the firm’s accelerator team that is now called Microsoft ScaleUp. In order to improve the transparency for startups, the Microsoft Ventures name has now been completely eliminated.

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M12 will continue to operate in the same way, usually investing in series A to D funding rounds for newly established startups in the aim of becoming a leading partner for promising technology firms in the initial stages of their growth and development.

“Today, Microsoft Ventures becomes M12,” said Nagraj Kashyap, CVP and Global Head of Early Stage Investments at Microsoft.

“We’re proud of the team and portfolio we’ve built, and are excited to introduce this new name as an affirmation of our strategy: we invest in the best enterprise startups; we align with our founders by measuring ourselves on financial return; and we leverage some of the best enterprise assets in the world to add value above and beyond our invested capital.”

“Our name change highlights our ongoing commitment to the innovators and entrepreneurs whose companies we’re so proud to support.”