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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Artificial Intelligence: Repurposing Old Drugs For New Uses
Ping Zhang, Senior Author, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Biomedical Informatics, Ohio State University, led a team of medical researchers on a project that used AI to suggest new uses for old drugs. The team found that machine learning could process huge amounts of data to determine whether existing, FDA-approved medications could be repurposed for use in other diseases.
Alternative Investments/Digital Assets: Fresh Bid By VanEck For A Bitcoin ETF
VanEck filed an application with the SEC last week for a VanEck Bitcoin Trust. The SEC has removed unmoved thus far and turned down all previous applications for launching a bitcoin ETF. VanEck itself retracted its previous ETF application in September 2019.
FinTech: Fintech And Ecommerce Billionaire Jack Ma Maybe Missing
Media chatter surrounds Jack Ma’s whereabouts after his controversial anti-establishment remarks at a Shanghai forum in late October.
Digital Assets: As Bitcoin Soars, Russia’s Gazprom Neft Kills Two Birds With One Stone
With bitcoin having scaled an all-time high of US$ 34,000, it is becoming increasingly lucrative to mine the cryptocurrency, especially if energy costs are low, or free. Gazprom Neft, a direct subsidiary of Russian gas monopoly Gazprom (MCX: GAZP), is converting gas from its oil fields, that would otherwise have been flared, into usable energy for bitcoin mining.
Venture Capital: Madrona Venture Group Raises Over $500M For Two New Funds
Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group has obtained more than $500 million in the largest-ever fundraising effort in its year history. Madrona has earmarked $345 million out of this capital for its eighth ‘early-stage’ fund targeting 35-to-40 Pacific Northwest tech startups. The balance amount of $160 million is for its second “acceleration fund” to be deployed for later-stage companies in North America.
Digital Assets: SolarWinds Attack More Widespread Than Thought
The massive cyberattack launched by a suspected nation-state earlier this month is more pervasive than previously estimated says the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The hack also attacked computer systems used by state and local governments, critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations.
Venture Capital: Octopus Energy Clinches Japanese Investment And Supply Deal
Octopus Energy has a mission: to disrupt the energy industry in Britain which “is ruled by a handful of complacent dinosaurs peddling fossil fuels, pricing trickery, and poor customer service.” Supplying green energy sourced from renewable sources, the startup is already adding 30,000 customers a month and supplies energy to 1.5 million homes in the UK. Expanding its international footprint, Octopus will soon enter Japan in collaboration with Tokyo Gas, the largest gas utility in Japan.
Alternative Investments/ESG: Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater And Lyxor Tie Up For All-Weather ESG UCITS Fund
Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, which is led by billionaire Ray Dalio, will launch in Europe a sustainability/ESG fund using a UCITS structure. For this purpose, it is partnering with Lyxor Asset Management, a subsidiary of French bank Societe Generale (PAR: GLE).
FinTech: China Mounts Anti-Trust Probe Into Alibaba In Regulatory Crackdown
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) announced Thursday an investigation into Alibaba’s (NYSE: BABA) allegedly monopolistic practice of barring its merchants from selling on competing e-commerce platforms. Merchants must agree to sell their products only on the behemoth’s online shopping platform.
Artificial Intelligence: An AI Bot Can Judge Your Taste In Music (It’s Free)
The Pudding, a digital publication, has created a free service to evaluate your Spotify playlists. Dubbed “How Bad Is Your Spotify,” it explains: “Our sophisticated A.I. judges your awful taste in music.”
Artificial Intelligence: Yahoo Japan To Deploy AI Against Cyberbullying
Yahoo Japan will use AI to detect and delete hate messages and defamatory remarks from its online posting sites. The action follows the tragic and suspected suicide due to cyberbullying of reality television show star Hana Kimura.
Digital Assets: SEC Has Ripple In The Dock; Garlinghouse Fires Back
The SEC on Tuesday charged Ripple and two executives for raising over $1.38 billion via an unregistered securities offering.
The SEC filed the complaint in the federal district court in Manhattan alleging that the defendants violated the registration provisions of the Securities Act. It prayed for injunctive relief, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, and civil penalties. The two executives named in the complaint are Christian Larsen, Ripple’s co-founder, executive chairman of its board, and former CEO; and Bradley Garlinghouse, the company’s current CEO.
Venture Capital: Logistics-on-demand Startup Lalamove Nabs $515M
Lalamove, the logistics major which offers services around the globe, announced Tuesday its Series E round raise of $515 million. Sequoia Capital China led the round which received participation from existing investors including Hillhouse Capital and Shunwei Capital.
Alternative Investments/ESG: Invesco Launches Four Active Non-Transparent ETFs
Investors get the opportunity to avail of Invesco’s investment expertise in their first suite of active, non-transparent ETFs. Other features of the ETFs that investors will find attractive are tax efficiency, intraday tradability and an arbitrage mechanism. Besides, the four ETFs also offer a very cost-effective structure.
FinTech: Large Chinese Fintechs Stop Taking Online Deposits For Banks
On Friday, the Jack Ma-controlled Ant Group’s Alipay platform, which offers an impressive array of financial products to its customers, removed online deposits that it was accepting on behalf of several banks. The reason – regulatory restrictions.
Alternative Investments/Digital Assets: Bitcoin Funds By CI Financial And Skybridge
Canadian mutual fund manager CI Financial Corp has floated a US$72 million bitcoin fund. The IPO of the closed-ended fund issued units at US$12.88 ($10) each. These will list on the Toronto Stock Exchange in both USD and Canadian dollars. Meanwhile, an SEC filing reveals that Skybridge Capital, the wealth management firm run by Anthony Scaramucci, is launching Skybridge Bitcoin Fund L.P.
Digital Assets: Clayton’s Parting Shot At Crypto – SEC To Sue Ripple
The SEC will likely sue Ripple, CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and co-founder Chris Larsen, according to Fortune. The SEC will charge the defendants for selling XRP tokens, which it alleges are unlicensed securities. XRP ranks third in the pecking order of cryptocurrencies with a market cap of $23 billion. The SEC would make the case that XRP is a security and it needed to be registered as an investment contract prior to its sale.
FinTechs: Call For Regulating Australian Buy-Now-Pay-Later Fintechs
In an article titled “Fintech Risk in 2021,” Halverson warns of heightened fintech risk in 2020 following free central bank “helicopter” money, overenthusiastic private equity and venture capital firms, and exuberant stock markets. In particular, he points to fintechs offering buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) products that have captured consumers’ fancy and encouraged them to increase their indebtedness.
Venture Capital: OneTrust, The Privacy And Compliance Platform Raises $300M
OneTrust is a fast-growing provider of privacy, security, and compliance software. The startup, which was launched in 2016, announced Monday its raise of $300 million in a Series C funding round that valued it at $5.1 billion. TCV led the round, with existing investors such as Insight Partners and Coatue also chipping in.
Artificial Intelligence: Stripchat Applies AI To Automatically Categorize LiveCam Sex Acts
Stripchat is using AI as a high-level marketing tool to make its live adult webcam streams more customer-focused. The webcam platform successfully developed AI to categorize live streams by the kind of sex act and present them accordingly on the main page of its website. It’s a win-win both for users and the cam models. Site traffic nearly doubled in 2020.
Digital Assets: MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin Binge Buying > $1B
MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), the business intelligence firm led by bitcoin evangelist CEO Michael Saylor, announced this morning that it had bought about 29,646 additional bitcoins for about $650 million in cash. The average price works out to approximately $21,925 per bitcoin, all-inclusive of fees and expenses.
Alternative Investments/Digital Assets: Suspected Russian Hack Attack Ignites Cybersecurity ETFs
A nation-scale bad actor is said to be responsible for the security breaches last week that have compromised untold numbers of victims ranging from government agencies to corporates. The modus operandi was to infect thousands of systems through SolarWinds, a third-party software vendor. Investors may keep an eye on cybersecurity stocks and ETFs.
Artificial Intelligence: Researchers Use AI To Detect Deadly Malaria Mosquito
AI can differentiate and detect the Anopheles mosquito, which is responsible for malaria, from other species of mosquitoes with near-total accuracy, according to researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.