In the venture capital world, bigger has been considered better, and the biggest is the
SoftBank's Vision Fund of $100 billion.
But now, this
SoftBank fund that invests $100 million or more in growth-stage technology companies, has fallen under criticism by two of its lead investors how it invests and how much it invests in technology companies.
To put this in perspective, consider that in 2018, venture funds globally raised $79 billion and invested $275 billion globally.
Industry specialization and deep tech dives are the latest trends in venture capital investing. This is the opposite of the
SoftBank fund's focus that looks more broadly across big market opportunities, and well-known and higher-profile companies:
Uber, DoorDash, WeWork, and ride-hailing leader
Didi in China and Grab in Singapore.
One concern is that the
SoftBank mega fund would raise investment valuations at emerging companies that venture capitalists target. Many of the emerging companies in its portfolio rank very high on the unicorn list. Read more at
Forbes:
A Softer Bank
DEALS
 |
|
|
Tencent's
Pony Ma
|
A move by Chinese tech titan
Tencent to co-invest $300 million in American social news aggregator
Reddit is part of its aggressive investment push in many leading tech companies.
Tencent has invested in
Uber,
Tesla and
Snap, acquired a bunch of gaming companies including
Riot Games and
Supercell, and co-invested in several US and Asian tech startups in robotics, biotech and machine learning.
In China,
Tencent
has targeted lead rival Alibaba with killer buys in e-commerce and sought to curb TikTok's quick-start video app by backing its main foe
Kuaishou
.
With
Reddit,
Tencent is going out of its usual bounds.
Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and
Fidelity Venture were co-investors
.
The deal with the media-oriented
Reddit has sparked protests of censorship from users. Interesting how
this deal got an OK by US regulators at this sensitive time in US-China trade and tech issues.
Burning Rock biotech startup tops off a $125.5 million Series C funding from
GIC, Lilly Asia Ventures, Sequoia and others. The Beijing-based company specializes in cancer genetic testing.
SAIF Partners has led a $12.5 million, 2nd round funding for India's online lending platform
ZipLoan.
Sequoia India and
SeaX Ventures have funded blockchain startup
Band Protocol, which has technology for token-created communities to solve fake news and privacy issues.
