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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Alternative Investments/Real Estate: Housing Market Demand Is “Insane”
Speaking to CNBC on Power Lunch, Glenn Kelman, CEO of real estate brokerage Redfin (NASDAQ: RDFN), said he expected the current boom conditions in the housing market to last well into next year. He attributed the high demand to affluent professionals looking for remote homes as well as low interest rates. Also, he thinks some sellers will put their properties on the market only after the presidential election.
Digital Assets: Paul Tudor Jones Says Bitcoin Rally In Its “First Innings”
Paul Tudor Jones made a splash in May when he disclosed a bitcoin investment and called the cryptocurrency the fastest horse in the race against inflation. On Thursday, he was on CNBC’s Squawk Box, and this time, he said bitcoin was similar to an investment in a tech startup.
FinTech: Across The Pond, Property Finance Fintechs Report Record Business
LendInvest, a leading property finance platform that offers short-term, development and buy-to-let mortgages to intermediaries, landlords, and developers across the UK reported a record quarter in Q3 for property bridge loan applications. EstateGuru, a crowdfunding marketplace for property-backed loans, reported record loan volumes during August and September.
Venture Capital: SpaceX Is “Mission Control” For Space Economy; Long-Term Value $100B
Analysts at Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) on Thursday doubled their estimated value of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s startup focused on launch rockets, satellite broadband, and (in the future) point-to-point space travel. Significant events since the last evaluation in July led the analysts to revise their long term estimate to $100 billion.
Artificial Intelligence: Saudi Crown Prince Calls For AI To Tackle The “New Global Normal”
Saudi Arabia hosted a two-day Global AI Summit commencing Wednesday at Riyadh. In a speech on its opening day Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that 2020 presented the “perfect opportunity” to test the potential of artificial intelligence in the face of the unprecedented challenges from the Covid 19 pandemic.
Liquid Alternatives: Fidelity Canada Launches Three New Liquid Alt Mutual Funds
Fidelity Investments Canada, one of the country’s largest investment managers, announced on Tuesday the launch of its maiden offerings within a liquid alternatives suite for Canadian investors.
Digital Assets: Paypal Sends Bitcoin Into Orbit
PayPal will allow customers to shop at its 26 million merchants using crypto currencies from early 2021. Further, PayPal customers can now buy, sell and hold bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies using the company’s online wallets. The facility will be available to US account holders over the coming weeks.
FinTech: Visa’s Tap-To-Phone Transforms Android Smartphones Into POS Terminals
Visa (NYSE: V) said Wednesday that its innovative new Tap to Phone product was now live in more than 15 markets. After extensive piloting, Visa’s simple new mobile app is now ready to enable millions of small scale businesses to receive contactless payments using no other equipment except an Android smartphone.
Artificial Intelligence: Boston Dynamics’ ‘Spot’ Robot To Work On Construction Sites
Autonomous robots will now work on construction sites to collect data and perform repetitive tasks such as site scans, surveys, and tracking progress of work. On Tuesday, Trimble Construction (NASDAQ: TRMB) and Boston Dynamics announced their partnership to integrate Trimble’s construction data collection technologies with Boston Dynamics’ Spot robotic platform.
Venture Capital: T-Mobile Ventures Launches To Fund 5G Startups
T-Mobile Ventures is a venture capital fund floated by T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) to focus on early-to-mid stage startups using 5G technology for developing core technologies, products, and services around the areas of edge computing, future of work, security, and industrial IoT.
Liquid Alternatives: Watch Out For These “Potholes” (Goldman Sachs)
Theodore Enders, Global Head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) Strategic Advisory Solutions, says that investors are sometimes disillusioned with their investments in alternatives. However, on closer analysis, it turns out that poor implementation choices within portfolios are more often the problem rather than flawed strategies.
Digital Assets: Sovereign Wealth Funds The Unseen Gorilla In The Bitcoin Room
There has been a remarkable change in recent months in the perception of bitcoin as an investible asset. Large, listed companies have parked sizable chunks of their cash reserves in bitcoin to diversify out of the dollar and to preserve the purchasing power of the money. Institutions have invested heavily in Grayscale Investments’ various cryptocurrency trusts, with the firm receiving over $1 billion in inflows during the third quarter of 2020. As this is being written, bitcoin is trading well above the psychological resistance of $12,000. However, sovereign wealth funds have not yet joined the bitcoin party.
FinTech: Digitization And Fintechs Make Inroads Into Asia’s Retirement Funds
A report from Cerulli Associates shows that retirement funds in Asia are upping their game in a drive to become more transparent, streamline their administrative processes, and give fund members greater access to their accounts.
Venture Capital: Kalanick, of Uber Fame, Buys $130M of Real Estate For CloudKitchens Startup
You could call it providential timing, but Kalanick’s CloudKitchens startup received a huge boost from the Covid-19 pandemic. With restaurants out of business, or temporarily shuttered, shelter in place diners had no choice but to order food for home delivery. Ghost kitchens, which let out space for cooking to food-for-delivery businesses, particularly in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, suddenly witnessed a surge in business.
Artificial Intelligence: By 2070, Robotic Judges Will Analyze Body Language To Pin Guilt
AI specialist Terence Mauri believes that robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will advance to a point where a robot judge could pass judgment with 99.9% accuracy using body language to detect signs of lying. 50 years from now, these robots will be fluent in every known language, show courtesy in the court, and deliver verdicts with near-total fairness and accuracy.
FinTech: Home Loans Get Quicker And Easier With Google’s Lending DocAI
Banks and mortgage brokers have to grapple with the hundreds of pages of paperwork for every home loan. Apart from being very time consuming, the highly manual process adds heavily to the cost of making the loan. Through its Document AI, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has already started to tackle some of the largest enterprise content problems plaguing the world. Lending DocAI is the first vertically specialized solution within Document AI and it addresses the mortgage industry.
Alternative Investments/ESG: How To See Through The “Ethical Veneer” (Bancroft Wealth)
Keir Ashman, pensions and investments specialist at Bancroft Wealth, points to the increasing demand for sustainable investments and says investors should be discerning in the choices if they want both return on investment (ROI) and return on principles (ROP).
Venture Capital: Apple Invites Applications From Black Founders and Developers For Its Entrepreneur Camp
In a notice on Monday, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) said applications were open from Black founders and developers for its Apple Entrepreneur Camp to be held online from February 16-25, 2021.
Digital Assets: Feminist Anti-Police Movement In Nigeria Uses Bitcoin For Funding
The Feminist Coalition Group is a group of Nigerian women working towards the aim of feminine equality in terms of rights, finances, and political and legislative power. The movement has got involved in the #EndSARS protest movement by Nigerians. After the Nigerian government blocked its bank accounts the Group has turned to bitcoin as a means to raise funds for its activities.
Artificial Intelligence: Aiden, The AI-Powered Electronic Trading Platform From RBC
RBC Capital Markets has leveraged Artificial Intelligence (AI) to achieve improved trading results and insights for its clients. Aiden, RBC’s electronic trading platform uses a deep neural network, centralized learning, a robust reward system, and exploration as the four key components in its global framework. The platform can learn from its interactions with the market and adjusts itself on the fly to fast-changing trading conditions.
Artificial Intelligence: Use Of AI To Monitor Construction Progress
Buildots launched in 2018 to turn construction sites into digitized environments using computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI). Projects are ever-expanding and often are controlled by just a handful of managers. A small error or delay can jeopardize the critical path for the project to complete on time and within cost. However, Buildots’ technology can help manage all that complexity and detail.
Digital Assets: High Inflation And Plunging Lira Push Bitcoin Adoption In Turkey
New registrations on the P2P bitcoin marketplace Paxful’s platform in Turkey have surged 274% over the past year. Given Turkey’s prevailing hyper-inflation and its fast weakening currency, Paxful is confident that crypto adoption will make massive strides in the country.
FinTech: Ant Group Gets China’s Go-Ahead For Mammoth IPO in Hong Kong
The China Securities Regulatory Commission has cleared the Ant Group’s listing in Hong Kong of what may be the world’s largest-ever initial public offering (IPO). Ant can now go ahead and request a listing hearing with the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd.
Liquid Alternatives: Because Bonds No Longer Diversify Or Pay A Yield
Matthew Yeates, Head of Alternatives and Quantitative Strategy at 7IM, recalls how he watched government bonds falling in value alongside equities during the March sell-off. This was not the way a traditionally balanced portfolio was meant to work.