Sorrell Co-founds £110m AdTech VC Fund

Sir Martin Sorrell has teamed up with Stanhope Capital Group founder Daniel Pinto to launch a venture capital fund called S4S Ventures, which will raise £110m from investors to fund early-stage 'Martech, Adtech, data tech, creative tech and emerging digital media / content firms'.

Sorrell set up S4Capital in 2018, just after quitting WPP, the marcoms giant he founded in 1985, and he has since made many acquisitions across the digital advertising, marketing services and data sectors. The new S4S Ventures initiative will be led by co-founder Sanja Partalo (pictured) who previously led WPP's strategic development and partnerships function. In her new role, Partalo will benefit from the support of the S4Capital network, comprising more than 7,500 people operating from 33 countries, as well as from Stanhope's investment expertise.

Specifically, S4S will seek to support companies providing solutions for the acceleration of programmatic advertising across Connected TV, gaming and digital audio; data warehousing, ingestion and analysis for the purposes of identity resolution; and transformation of content development through cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure. It will also consider funding organisations which are monetization 'metaverse' opportunities, as well as digital media aimed at Generation Z.

The new fund will invest globally, but with an emphasis on the US, Europe and the Middle East, and Pinto and Sir Martin will sit on the S4S investment committee. Sir Martin comments: 'The fund will provide investee companies with more than capital - offering differentiated value through the advantage afforded by the S4 network and our specialist knowledge with geographical, client and talent inputs. We are in a strong position to help portfolio companies validate ideas, launch products, accelerate growth with clients and partners and help engineer strategic partnerships, investments and exits'.

Web sites: www.s4capital.com and www.stanhopecapital.com .