While SoftBank continues to make big bets on startups out of its $100-billion Vision Fund, it has also launched another investment vehicle to invest in tech opportunities specifically in Latin America. Today the group announced the SoftBank Innovation Fund, which is starting out with a $2 billion commitment to invest in tech startups in Central…
Money talks in the startup community, especially when SoftBank comes knocking with the megabucks of its Vision Fund. Despite the public outcry around the firm’s dependence on money from Saudi Arabia in the wake of that country’s assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, deal flow for Softbank’s Vision Fund appears to be back to…
After 12 years spent investing in impact-oriented financial services startups around the globe, the Omidyar Network, which serves as the family investment office for eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, is spinning off its financial inclusion investment arm as Flourish Ventures. Equipped with up to $300 million in capital for operations and investments, the new Flourish will…
Google today is introducing a new way for Android developers to generate revenue from their mobile applications. And no, it’s not subscription-related. Instead, the company is launching a new monetization option for apps called “Rewarded Products.” This will allow non-paying app users to contribute to an app’s revenue stream by sacrificing their time, but not…
Facebook has refused to provide the British parliament with the names of individuals behind a shadowy network backing an extreme ‘no deal’ Brexit outcome over a government-negotiated compromise. Since the June 2016 EU referendum vote, politics in the UK has been consumed by the question of how to implement a close vote to leave. And…
Alibaba is about to get a jolt from its largest rival in Southeast Asia. Sea, the Nasdaq-listed business, is raising as much as $1.5 billion from a new share offering that’s sure to be funneled into its Shopee e-commerce business. Singapore-based Sea said in a filing that it plans to offer 60 million American Depositary…
Minnie Ingersoll has already had an enviable career. After 12 years at Google, working as product manager and later principal with Google.org, she co-founded the venture-backed online car marketplace Shift in 2013, then she left to join the nonprofit Code for America, where she learned entirely new skills, including managing finance and marketing and recruiting.…
Automobili Pininfarina, the automaker brand infused with Pininfarina design house DNA and owned by India’s Mahindra Group, revealed its first production car this week at the Geneva International Motor Show. And it’s an audacious inaugural effort. The Pininfarina Battista — a nod to design house founder Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina — is an all-electric beast of…
Hardware, as the saying goes, is hard, but today a startup has raised some money for a manufacturing service that it believes can make the prospect of starting and running hardware businesses a little easier. Fictiv, which positions itself as a kind of AWS for manufacturing — providing a platform both to design components and…
Twelve years after a first patient was identified as cured of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, a second patient undergoing similar treatment was diagnosed as in long-term remission, according to a New York Times report citing an article in to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature. The report means that a cure for…
