Tag: Vision Fund
Unpacking Sequoia’s $21M conflict of interest
Yesterday, TechCrunch broke the news that Sequoia, one of the best-known venture capital firms in the market today, had “parted ways with [Finix] over a purported conflict of interest and, almost more shockingly, handed back its board seat, its information rights, its shares and its full investment.” Sequoia led the…
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Latin America roundup: Softbank adds $1B, Stori raises $10M and Grow Mobility puts on the brakes
After investing nearly $2 billion of its Innovation Fund in Latin America in 2019, Softbank announced this month that it would add an additional $1 billion into the fund to continue supporting tech startups across the region. While the Japanese investor faces the challenge of raising a second global fund after its…
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Karius raises $165 million for its liquid biopsy technology identifying diseases in a drop of blood
“What Karius is good at is identifying those novel microbes before they become an outbreak like coronavirus,” says Mickey Kertesz, a chief executive whose life sciences startup just hauled in $165 million in new funding. While the new money may have been raised under the looming threat of Covid 19,…
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As a top manager leaves amid fundraising woes, SoftBank’s vision looks dimmer — and schadenfreude abounds
Every once in a while, an organization implodes so fantastically that it’s hard in retrospect to understand why another outcome once seemed possible. With every passing day, SoftBank — which shook up the investing world with the largest investment fund ever pooled, then seemed to use its capital as a…
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Uber’s self-driving unit starts mapping Washington, D.C. ahead of testing
Uber Advanced Technologies Group will start mapping Washington, D.C., ahead of plans to begin testing its self-driving vehicles in the city this year. Initially, there will be three Uber vehicles mapping the area, a company spokesperson said. These vehicles, which will be manually driven and have two trained employees inside,…
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Layoffs reach 23andMe after hitting Mozilla and the Vision Fund portfolio
Layoffs in the technology and venture-backed worlds continued today, as 23andMe confirmed to CNBC that it laid off around 100 people, or about 14% of its formerly 700-person staff. The cuts would be notable by themselves, but given how many other reductions have recently been announced, they indicate that a…
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