News
Each day, DailyAlts tracks major developments across the alternative investment world. Our content is procured from primary contacts in the industry and secondary sources across the web. Our goal is to give readers the most up-to-date news and engaging experience to open new doors and areas of knowledge. Our stories cover nine separate verticals of the alternative investment industry.
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Chipmaker AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) has unveiled a range of innovative AI solutions spanning from data centers to personal computers. The AMD Instinct MI300 Series features data center AI accelerators, while the ROCm 6 open software stack introduces new features supporting Large Language Models (LLMs). Additionally, the Ryzen 8040 Series processors come equipped with Ryzen AI capabilities.
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Digital Assets: Retail Investors A Force To Reckon With In Cryptos (JP Morgan)
Latest quarterly numbers show retail investors stole a march on institutions.
Figures from JPMorgan Chase, cited by Bloomberg, show that retail investors invested in 187,426 bitcoins in the current quarter up to Friday, whereas institutions bought up 172,684 of the leading cryptocurrency.
Artificial Intelligence: Germany’s Artai.biz Helps With The Provenance Of Historical Artifacts
Artai.biz, a German AI startup, has made it easier to establish the provenance of a historical artifact or antique. Provenance refers to the object’s history of origin, a detailed list of its owners, and publications about it in books and magazines. A convincing and reliable provenance goes a long way towards establishing the object’s authenticity. Artai’s system is capable of identifying an object in the vast database of pictures and photographs resident on the Internet.
Venture Capital: AI-Powered Innovation Platform PatSnap Secures $300M Including From SoftBank
Patsnap announced Tuesday its Series E funding of $300 million led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Tencent Investment with participation from CPE Industrial Fund and existing investors Sequoia China, Shun Wei Capital, and Vertex Ventures. The company, which operates out of multiple headquarters in Toronto (North America), London (Europe), and Singapore (Asia), is a leader in the so-called “connected innovation intelligence category.”
FinTech: Point-of-Sale Device Company SumUp Raises $892M Debt Facility
SumUp is a London-based global fintech company that has developed point-of-sale hardware and mobile and web apps that simplify the acceptance of payments by small merchants. It has also developed a suite of APIs and SDKs for integrating SumUp payment into other apps and services. The startup announced Tuesday its raise of a debt funding of €750 million (US$892 million at today’s rates).
Liquid Alternatives: The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Index Returns 1.18% In February
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Index Returns 1.18% In February. That figure underperformed the 1.52% monthly return from the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index in the month of February.
Artificial Intelligence: Acciona To Use Its Maestro AI Platform At Qatar Desalination Plant
Spanish infrastructure and renewable energy giant Acciona won the contract for the design, construction, and O&M of the Umm Al Houl SWRO desalination plant in Qatar in 2015. The plant will produce 564,000 m3 of desalinated water per day, enough to serve 1.1 million people, after the start-up of operations in April. Acciona will fund an AI project at the facility from its dedicated decarbonization fund.
Liquid Alternatives: “Replace The Flawed 60/40 Approach With A Multi-Asset Portfolio” – 7IM
According to Matthew Yeates, Head of Alternatives and Quantitative Strategy, 7IM, current record low yields on bonds have made the 60:40 investing mantra an “anachronism.” Bonds provide neither the returns nor the benefit of diversification as a foil to the riskier and higher growth equity component in the portfolio. The solution is to incorporate alternatives into the investing mix.
Digital Assets: Stimulus Checks Could End Up Chasing Bitcoin And Stocks (Mizuho)
Nearly 10% of the direct stimulus amount of $380 billion could potentially end up being used not for groceries and healthcare but instead in bets on volatile assets such as bitcoin and stocks said a report in Yahoo Finance that cited a survey by Mizuho Securities.
Venture Capital: Star Professor And Scientist Daphne Koller’s insitro Raises $400M
insitro, the startup founded by Stanford University professor and Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller, is again in the news for a big fundraiser. The data-driven drug discovery and development company announced a $400 million Series C round led by Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments).
FinTech: India’s Fintech Industry Represents A $100B Value Creation Opportunity (BCG Report)
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) conducted a study of the Indian fintech industry in collaboration with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). The report titled “India Fintech: A USD 100 Billion Opportunity,” said India’s fintech was a vibrant ecosystem on a high-growth trajectory, having raised USD 10 billion over the past five years, and currently poised at an estimated valuation of USD 50-60 billion.
Digital Assets: India Plans To Criminalize Crypto-Assets (Reuters)
A Reuters report today, which quoted a senior Indian government official, said India plans to outlaw cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, making anyone trading or holding them punishable with fines.
Alternative Investments/Digital: Valkyrie Moots An ETF That Invests In Corporate Bitcoin Players
Adding to the SEC’s growing pile of applications from asset managers to launch a bitcoin ETF is a new one from Valkyrie Digital Assets, but this one comes with a twist. The firm has filed for an ETF to be launched with the name “Valkyrie Innovative Balance Sheet ETF.”
Venture Capital: Cowbell Cyber Nails $20M Funding Round To Insure Businesses Against Online Attacks
Cowbell Cyber, an insurtech, focuses on providing small and medium enterprises with AI-powered insurance against cyberattacks. The company announced Thursday its close of a Series A funding of $20 million led by Brewer Lane Ventures. Pivot Investment Partners, Avanta Ventures, Markel Corporation, and existing investors ManchesterStory, Tri-Valley Ventures, and Holmes Murphy also participated.
FinTech: Stripe Raises $600M; Triples Valuation To $95B In Less Than A Year
Stripe, the global payments major founded by the Collison brothers, said on Sunday that it closed on a $600 million funding round at a valuation of $95 billion. Allianz X, Axa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Sequoia Capital, and Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) invested in the round.
Artificial Intelligence: AI To Combat Food Waste In Japan
The pandemic has brought food waste under a disapproving glare, and Japanese companies are rushing to comply with the country’s new law that aims to cut food waste levels by 50% (from 2000 levels) by 2030. Many of these companies are deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to address the menace of food waste. It costs Japan $19 billion to handle its annual food waste of 6 million tons.
Venture Capital: Forward Health Lands $225M In Series D Funding
Forward Health is an entirely new ‘concierge’ healthcare system empowering doctors with technology and data to monitor and guide health outcomes. It raised $225 million in Series D funding with participation from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Marc Benioff, and The Weeknd, among others. The funding will help the tech-centric primary healthcare startup expand its services across the U.S.
Digital Assets: Crypto Lender BlockFi Snags $350M In A Series D Funding Round
BlockFi, which functions as a one-stop crypto bank, allowing you to earn interest on your crypto holdings, announced today the close of its Series D fundraising of $350 million that valued the startup at $3 billion.
FinTech: Grab Could List In The U.S. Through A Merger With A Blank Check Company
Grab Holdings Inc, which is backed by SoftBank (TYO: 9984), is considering the SPAC route to a U.S. listing, according to a Bloomberg report. Previously we reported that the startup, whose businesses span everything from food delivery to ride-sharing, insurance, financial services, and investing, was considering a traditional IPO in the U.S. worth more than $2 billion.
Artificial Intelligence: Venture Capitalists Will Use More AI By 2025 (Gartner)
Those Midas-touched VCs who pick investing winners using a combination of their experience, “gut feel,” and quantitative data will soon play second fiddle to AI and data analytics says a report by Gartner.
Alternative Investments/Hedge Funds: ASYMmetric Launches The ASYMshares ASYMmetric 500 ETF With An All-Weather, Long-Short Strategy
ASYMmetric ETFs, LLC announced the launch today of its ASYMshares ASYMmetric 500 ETF (NYSE: ASPY), calling it a disruptive risk management tool. The turnkey investment solution seeks to provide protection against bear market losses and to capture the majority of bull market gains.
Venture Capital: Israeli Cloud Security Startup Snyk Scores $300M Funding; Quadruples Valuation
Israeli startup Snyk, which specializes in cloud-native application security, said today it had closed a Series E financing round for $300 million of which $175 million flowed into the company’s coffers. The rest constituted a secondary offering. Of note is the fact that Snyk has quadrupled its valuation in a year, such was the impact of the pandemic and the resulting demand for security from digital transformation.
Artificial Intelligence: Smarter Cleaning Of Restrooms At Pittsburgh International Airport
Students from CMU’s Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence and Innovation program have been jointly working with Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) to streamline its operations and to improve travelers’ experience.
Digital Assets: Private Banks In Germany And Switzerland Commence Crypto Services To Meet High Demand
Hamburg-based Donner & Reuschel and Swiss private bank NPB Neue Privat Bank AG now offer crypto services. Earlier this month, Bordier & Cie, a private Swiss bank founded back in 1844, started offering cryptocurrency services to clients, too.
FinTech: SoFi Advances Bank Charter Ambitions; Acquires Golden Pacific Bancorp
Digital personal finance company and fintech Social Finance Inc (SoFi) announced on Tuesday its acquisition of Golden Pacific Bancorp, Inc, a community bank based in Sacramento, California. SoFi will pay $2.55 in cash for each share of Golden Pacific, or about $22.3 million in total. Also included in the transaction is the bank’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Golden Pacific Bank, N.A. The deal will advance SoFi’s aim to secure a banking charter.