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.
Top Story
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.
Get Daily Updates
Subscribe to DailyAlts Today to get Alternative Investment news, insight, and commentary delivered straight to your inbox every day.
More Stories on News
Hedge Funds: Bitcoin In Play as Funds Dive Back In
Crypto Hedge Funds Move In On Bitcoin. Bitcoin fell by 50 percent in cryptocurrency’s price in March, but subsequently rose back up to trade at $11,200. Investors should caution as this trend could lead to another major slump — most notably like the 2017 80 percent Bitcoin slump. Especially with the uncertainty of COVID-19, investors…
Private Equity: Warburg Pincus Gives Green Light to Deal for SOC Telemed
Telemedicine Poised for Growth. Leading acute care telemedicine provider SOC Telemed announced that it will partner with private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Shulman Ventures amid a fast-growing climate for the telemedicine space. Following this agreement, CEO Paul Ricci — also advisor of Warburg Pincus — will step down. SOC’s management team will consist of…
Alternative Investments/ESG: EFIV – A New, Inexpensive ESG ETF From State Street
State Street Global Advisors launched an ESG version of its blockbuster SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA: SPY) that has AUM of $287.61 billion. The ETF has the best of both worlds from environment-social-governance (ESG) and the S&P500 stocks universe.
Venture Capital: Impact X Capital’s Thesis For Investing £100M In Black Founders
Profits and purpose. Those are the two bottom lines for Impact X Capital, the London-based venture firm conceived by Eric Collins to support underrepresented entrepreneurs across Europe. The firm was in operation long before the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s now armed with £100 million to invest in such entrepreneurs.
FinTech: Seattle Mints Its Second Unicorn This Month in Remitly
Immigrant focused remittance fintech Remitly announced Wednesday that it raised $85 million in a Series F round led by existing investor Prosus’s PayU. Generation Investment Management, Owl Rock Capital, Stripes, DN Capital, Top Tier, Princeville Global, and Threshold Ventures also participated.
Artificial Intelligence: A Mathematical Watcher Over AI
Researchers from the University of Warwick, Imperial College London, EPFL (Lausanne) and Sciteb Ltd have devised a mathematical method to watch over AI and the possibility that it could adopt unethical strategies.
Hedge Funds: Boaz Weinstein’s Saba Capital Up 90%
Saba Projects Continuing Gains Hedge fund industry observers are buzzing of Saba Capital Management’s purported sharp gains, in addition to the firm’s projections of seeing additional returns of this caliber in the months ahead. Boaz Weinstein, founder of Saba, shares that “Markets are at an unstable place right now. I look out at the next…
Private Equity: Covid-19 Ignites PE’s Dry Powder
Hundreds of Billions in New Capital Earmarked for Investments. Despite many businesses closing down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, private equity is taking advantage of new opportunities. The industry is looking to rebuild the economy and adapt to the New Normal in ways that are expected to enahance gains, inclding further investments in existing portfolio…
FinTech: Marqeta to Power JP Morgan’s Virtual Cards Program
Marqeta, a global card issuing platform, will provide its card tokenization capabilities to JPMorgan Chase’s (NYSE: JPM) virtual card program in 2021. The bank would, therefore, be able to issue its virtual cards into the mobile wallets of its commercial card clients.
Digital Assets: This Popular Korean Beach Will Accept Crypto Payments
Haeundae (pictured above) is South Korea’s most popular beach. Alongside is the rival Songjeong Beach, which is more popular with surfers. Both tourist spots will accept payments in cryptocurrencies, effective August 2020.
Artificial Intelligence: An AI Program Identifies Prostate Cancer With Almost 100% Accuracy
Researchers at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh have trained an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to recognize and characterize prostate cancer with near-perfect accuracy.
Venture Capital: What COVID? Indonesian Travel Aggregator Traveloka Snags $250M
Indonesian online travel portal Traveloka announced Tuesday that it raised $250 million in a round led by a global financial institution with participation by some existing investors. Traveloka said the investment came despite the travel sector being in an “unprecedented challenging state,” and a historic drop in its own business activity “to levels never seen before.”
Hedge Funds Meet Real Estate: A Texas Case Study
Hayman Capital in Focus. Hedge fund investor Kyle Bass recently bought, among other real estate, the downtown Dallas Statler hotel. He purchased a 50 percent stake in four real estate properties and a minority stake in the Statler hotel. In addition to the Statler, he purchased a stake in the Entrada development and the Central…
Private Equity: Healthcare Firm Edifecs Lands PE Deal
Private equity firms TA Associates and Francsico Partners announced that they will complete a deal with healthcare software company Edifecs. CEO of Edifecs Sunny Singh intends to lead the company through a transformation. The healthcare industry is quickly changing with the help of the technology sector. According to Singh, “Today’s healthcare industry is in a…
Digital Assets: Anybody Can Use Tokenizer To Issue Asset-Backed Tokens
The much-awaited democratization of blockchain-based tokenization is here. Now anybody, even a computer noob, can choose to tokenize one or more of their real-world assets using the Tokenizer platform.
Alternative Investments/ESG: BlackRock Warns of Water Stress, a Climate Change Fallout
Watch for ETFs focused on ESG, climate change, and water resource stocks. Recent research from the BlackRock Investment Institute (BII) warns that investors have not factored in the potential risk from a growing global “water risk,” when demand for H2O exceeds its supply. Such a situation would be a fallout from the increasing evidence of…
Venture Capital: Telehealth Company Ro Raises $200M at a $1.5B Valuation
Ro, the NY-based, patient-driven telehealth company, completed a $200m Series C funding round on Monday. Existing investor General Catalyst led the round. Other existing investors that participated included FirstMark Capital, Torch, SignalFire, TQ Ventures, Initialized Capital, 3L, and BoxGroup. The Chernin Group invested in Ro for the first time. Ro has now raised a total of $376 million.
FinTech: Buy-Now-Pay-Later Platform Sezzle Teams With Plaid
Sezzle, a fintech that offers interest-free installment purchase plans to 1.4 million consumers at online stores and physical locations, has tied up with Plaid. Sezzle’s customers can now connect (via Plaid) their financial accounts maintained with the traditional banks to the Sezzle platform.
Artificial Intelligence: Testing A COVID Vaccine For All Geographies; MIT’s Optivax
A team of researchers at MIT CSAIL is using machine learning to predict its efficacy across populations. Their Optivax design system is a combinatorial machine learning system. It selects peptides (short strings of amino acids) that are predicted to provide high population coverage for a vaccine.
CrossFit Builds Muscle with Berkshire PE Investment
Eric Roza Teams with Berkshire. Berkshire Partners announced that it will partner with Eric Roza to buy CrossFit. CrossFit, a leading health and fitness brand, begain in a garage 20 years ago in California and now serves millions of people in their fitness endeavors. The company has about 14,000 gyms around the world. According to…
Private Equity in Focus: Retirement Plans Would Benefit From PE
SEC Chairman Clayton is an advocate. Private equity may soon become a part of retirement plans in America. Several Trump administration officials are in favor of allowing individual investors to invest in private equity through their 401(k) plans. SEC chairman Jay Clayton is one of these advocates. Officials contend that this move can expedite American…
Venture Capital Giant Sequoia Says World Awash With Capital
Anandan was speaking at a session of the Global Fintech Fest organised by the NPCI, Payments Council of India and Fintech Convergence Council. The Sequoia India Managing Director said that there was no scarcity of global capital for Indian companies notwithstanding the coronavirus epidemic and its bruising economic impact.
Nuveen Expanding Impact Investing Initiatives
The Impact Investing community is buzzing over Nuveen’s continued build out of its impact investing focus. Rekha Unnithan, who joined the firm in 2012 with the intention of investing in solving societal issues, says “Impact investing is now all of a sudden having its moment…It’s cool now and is getting a lot more attention. We…
Digital Assets: Now, A Secure XRP Wallet Running In Your Browser
Craig DeWitt is a director of product at Ripple, the blockchain payment infrastructure firm. Payburner is his project for an eCommerce platform that would enable buying, selling, paying, and donating on “both sides of the crypto commerce equation” using XRP.