On a very short list of leading corporate lawyers in California, Louis Lehot has handled some of the highest profile matters in recent years in the tech, health care, and clean energy spaces. A partner in the firm’s Private Equity & Venture Capital, M&A, and Transactions Practices, as well as the Technology, Health Care, Life Sciences, and Energy Industry Teams, he advises entrepreneurs and their management teams, investors, and financial advisors at all stages of growth.
Lehot is skilled at taking clients from “garage to global,” helping them achieve hyper-growth, go public, and successfully obtain optimal liquidity events. He guides emerging private companies as they secure venture capital financing, prepare for IPO, de-SPAC, or an M&A transaction, and navigate the exit. Clients routinely turn to Louis for his domain experience in public offerings and private placements of equity, equity-linked, and debt securities, mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, spinoffs, strategic investments, and joint ventures, as well as corporate governance and securities law compliance matters. Additionally, Lehot regularly represents U.S. and non-U.S. registrants before the SEC, FINRA, NYSE, and NASDAQ.
Lawdragon Honors
| Honor | Year | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| The 2027 Lawdragon 500 Leading Dealmakers | 2027 | Private Equity, Venture Capital, M&A |
Lehot draws on more than 25 years of global experience and leverages the latest legal technology tools to drive strategies and solutions that make sense. He has been recognized by peer-reviewed industry guides and leading practitioners as one of the most innovative, creative, and versatile corporate counsel.
Representative Experience
Mergers, Acquisitions, and Joint Ventures
- Represented Matterport (Nasdaq: MTTR) in its sale to CoStar Group (Nasdaq: CSGP) for cash and stock valued at over $2.1 billion, including an FTC-led antitrust review
- Represented Mirantis in its sale to IREN (Nasdaq: IREN) in a $625 million all-stock transaction, to unlock AI compute utilization in the datacenter, adding Kubernetes and enterprise ops to help them deploy GPUs into usable revenue-generating AI-infrastructure.
- Represented Riverwood Capital in its acquisition of a controlling stake in LeapXpert, the leader in governed communication intelligence, and Archimed in its acquisitions of Irrimax and Cellese (values not published).
- Represented Centric Software (PLM enterprise SaaS software backed by Dassault Systemes and Oak Investment Partners)
Venture Capital & Growth Equity
- Represented NEA in seed and follow-on investments in Robinhood (IPO), ScoutRFP (sold to Workday), Automation Anywhere (largest Series A transaction ever at US$265m), FightCamp, Evernow, AI2, Embrace Mobile, Weaviate, Slash, Regression Games, Fabric8 Labs, Modyfi, Fizz Social, Kindred Concepts, FloxDev, Nordsense, Arris, Orby AI, Comanche Biopharma, Sorriso Pharma, Datafold, beehiiv, World Labs (sold to AMD), NG.CASH, Abcuro, Bluefish, Positron and dozens of other transactions for over 15 years.
- Represented Samsung Ventures in dozens of early- to late-stage investments in technology, health care, and life science businesses, managing the portfolio and subsequent monetization transactions, including investments in Walden Robotics, Loft Orbital, Cartesia, WitnessAI, XBOW and Lumotive, and, through Samsung Catalyst, Normal Computing and Lucid Micro
- Represented Riverwood Capital in growth equity investments as lead investor in Alation, AppZen, BigID, Degreed, Druva, CloudVirga, One Model, Sauce Labs, SpyCloud
Emerging Growth Companies
- Represented Gatik AI (autonomous delivery backed by FM Capital, KDT Ventures, Endeavor), including its $200 million Series D financing led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies and its partnership with PepsiCo
- Represent GoodData (enterprise SaaS, backed by General Catalyst, a16z, Intel Capital, and Visa Ventures)
- Represented Tuplejump (big data, sold to Apple)
Fund Formation
- Bioluminescence Ventures in structuring and fund formation, leading to its emergence from stealth with $477 million in assets under management
- TDK Ventures, in structuring and executing a multi-LP fund focused on energy disruption and another fund focused on investing in India
- LG Technology Ventures in its initial formation and first five funds
- Mighty Capital, One Way Ventures, AI Sprouts VC and Cortical Ventures
Public Company Representation
- Matterport (Nasdaq: MTTR)
- Avnet, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVT)
- CHC Helicopter (NYSE: HELI)
- Dasan Zhone Solutions (NASDAQ: DZSI)
- SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRF)
Capital Markets Transactions
- Represented doc.ai and founders in combination with Sharecare and Falcon Capital Acquisition Corp. in a de-SPAC’ing transaction (2021)
- Represented SoftBank as selling holder in Guardant Health, 10x Genomics and Slack IPOs (2018-2019)
- Represented CBRE in multiple capital markets transactions
Convertible Notes, Investment Grade and High Yield Bond Offerings
- Represented Northrop Grumman, France Telecom, Orange, STMicroelectronics, Rhodia, ALSTOM and Dassault Systemes SA in multiple capital markets transactions for ordinary shares, high yield bonds, convertible bonds, exchangeable bonds and other instruments, as well as in public reporting and SEC compliance