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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Fintech: M&A In the Fintech Space Will Heat Up
One of the clear winners, if there is such a thing of the current economic situation, will be fintech companies. And we can expect to see a wave of fintech M&A as a result. There was already a trend towards digital platforms in the financial services industry. Now it’s just accelerating. Even those who prefer…
REITS: Industrial Properties Look Promising On These Trends
Like most Real Estate Investment Trusts, the prices of industrial REITs have declined sharply in the coronavirus driven selloff in the equity markets. While there may be real concerns for some sectors of real estate like office space, shopping centers, and even multifamily properties, industrial real estate may well see a dramatic increase in demand for the properties they own and manage.
Private Equity: Is Dave and Busters a PIPE Dream?
Dave and Busters (NASDAQ:PLAY) have been hard hit by the economic downturn.
The restaurant and arcade company closed its stores across the United States. It furloughed at least 15,000 hourly team members, store management, and corporate staff. Meanwhile, it cut the compensation of the senior leadership team by 50 percent.
And the Board of Directors has suspended Directors’ cash compensation for the remainder of the year.
So… what next?
Real Estate: Blackstone Group Pulls Out of Oakland Deal for Upton Station Building
Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX) is pulling out of a deal to buy an office property in Oakland, California, for $400 million. Blackstone had planned to use funds from its non-traded Real Estate Investment Trust (BREIT) to buy the Upton Station building from real estate and infrastructure invest firm CIM Group. Blackstone will forfeit a $20 million deposit to exit the transaction.
Liquid Alternatives: ITB, The Home Construction ETF May Have Bottomed
ITB is the largest ETF in the home construction space. It provides exposure to U.S. companies that manufacture residential homes by tracking the Dow Jones U.S. Select Home Construction Index. It currently has assets of $707.64 million and charges an expense ratio of 0.42%.
ITB may be ready to rebound, on account of both technical and fundamental factors.
FinTech: Small Businesses Left High and Dry as Lending Platform Kabbage Switches off Loans
Some small business customers of Kabbage received an unpleasant surprise this past week when they found their credit line had been abruptly cut to zero. “This is very bad business ethics,” complained one distraught customer to Bloomberg. “You just turn it off without saying a word — not an email, not a phone call, nothing.”
Venture Capital: Biotech the Flavor of the Season; Two VCs Raise $1B+ Funds Each
Flagship Pioneering Raises $1.1B; Arch Venture Partners Gets $1.46B. While Flagship Pioneering will use the money for sustainability and biotech, Arch Venture will invest in early-stage biotech companies.
DailyAlts Playbook: Mark Yusko, Bill Ackman, Tiger King, and “Bringing Back Paper Bags…”
THE DAILYALTS PLAYBOOK April 3, 2020 Today, the DailyAlts Playbook Talks About Mark Yusko, Bill Ackman, Tiger King, and “Bringing Back Paper Bags…” PRIME OVERVIEW Good morning: Markets are still locked in negative momentum. Oil bouncing to $26. But are we really going to speculate on oil right now? Perhaps… perhaps it’s worth looking at…
Artificial Intelligence: AI to Help Analyze Large Images from Aerial Sources
L3Harris Technologies Inc (NYSE: LHX), a global aerospace and defense technology company, is building a new platform that will apply AI to help make sense of aerial data for the military. L3Harris will create the training data and workflows that will enable a machine learning tool to process data for the Department of Defense and derive actionable intelligence from it.
Alternative Investments: Activists Will Get Busy Soon, Says Tim Melvin
As companies become more undervalued as the economy slows because of shutdown orders across the United States, I expect that the pace of activist activity to increase. We should see more filings later this week as investors hit the deadline to file on shares purchased during the selloff that started yesterday.
Private Equity: Active Triage Happening at KKR and Other Funds
KKR & Co (NYSE: KKR) has shelved a plan to sell Singapore-based Goodpack, a Singapore based shipping containers, and logistics services.
They had bids for the company that was said to be as high as $2 billion, but buyers have pulled back as the spread of the virus has made the company much less attractive at that price level.
This is one example of active triage on portfolio companies and dealing with the limitation of getting things done when under a lockdown order in may cities.
FinTech: Kyash Closes $45M Series C Funding
Kyash, a Japanese fintech startup aspiring to be a leading challenger bank, gained $45 million in a Series C funding. The round was co-led by Greenspring Associates and Goodwater Capital, a global consumer technology investor along with several venture capital firms from around the world.
The startup will use the funds to accelerate its full-stack mobile banking business in Japan, as well as to advance its overall growth strategy and business domain expansion, mainly into the banking space.
Liquid Alternatives: Investors Shovelled $677B Into Money Market Funds In Scramble to Safety
Investors set up a record-breaking first quarter this year for inflows into U.S. money market funds. These funds gained from the massive risk-off sentiment that prevailed as investors realized the economic repercussions from the coronavirus. Investors dumped stocks and bonds and headed for the safety of money market funds.
Venture Capital: CARES Act – Save Our Small Businesses, Urge Pelosi and Khanna
Hundreds of small businesses that have received venture capital finance may be excluded from the relief offered in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a part of the $2 trillion CARES Act coronavirus stimulus package. They would be denied even if the number of their employees is less than the qualifying limit of 500. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Cal.) wrote to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Jovita Carranza, head of the Small Business Administration (SBA) to correct this anomaly.
Artificial Intelligence: Startup Kogniz Uses AI With Health Cams to Detect Fever
Kogniz, a startup based in Mill Valley, California, has launched a tool to detect people who may be suffering from the deadly coronavirus. Using high technology cameras and an AI-based software platform, Kogniz’s system can identify an infected person. They can then be stopped from entering the building.
DailyAlts Playbook: Activists in a Pandemic, SoftBank’s WeWork Debacle, High-Yield Defaults, and Demon Days
The Dow Futures rallied more than 340 points after a dismal start to the second quarter. This morning, investors are paying very close attention to the weekly jobless claims from the Department of Labor. Last week, the agency reported that 3.2 million Americans had applied for unemployment benefits. Today, that figure reached six million. Economists had expected roughly four to five million people to file for unemployment, with the high range at nine million.
Digital Assets: “Disruptive” Insurance for Digital Asset and Cannabis Businesses From Relm Insurance
Relm Insurance Ltd plans to offer insurance coverage to digital asset enterprises and cannabis and hemp-related businesses. In future Realm will extend insurance coverage to new sectors such as digital banking, the sharing and gig economy, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence. Bermuda Premier David Burt, when announcing the grant of the license, welcomed the company’s choice of Bermuda as their domicile.
REITs: Big Insider Buying at Hudson Pacific Properties
Prices of Real Estate Investment Trusts and real estate operating companies plunged in March. Officers and directors of many REITs have stepped up to buy the shares the public has sold.
Some of the most significant insider buying has occurred recently at Hudson Pacific Properties (NYSE: HPP) where three insiders have combined to make open market purchases of the REIT they help direct.
Hedge Funds: Steven Cohen Warns of “Tremors” After the Earthquake in the Markets
Steven A. Cohen, the founder of Point72 Asset Management, warned investors to be cautious about the current market environment. The fund manager suggested that the markets haven’t fully recovered from lows fueled by the coronavirus.
Liquid Alternatives: American Century to Launch Active ETFs That Disclose Quarterly
Thursday, April 2, marks the beginning of a new era of active, non-transparent ETFs. In a brave step considering the current market conditions, American Century Investments will launch Thursday two new “active” ETFs. The American Century Focused Dynamic Growth ETF (FDG) and the American Century Focused Large Cap Value ETF (FLV) will list on CBOE Global Markets.
Ride Sharing Startup Via Raises $400M @ Valuation of $2.25B
Dial-a-shared-shuttle startup Via raised $400 million in a Series E funding round led by Exor (BIT: EXO) at a valuation of $2.25 billion. Exor is a holding company of the billionaire Italian Agnelli family and owns chunks of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (BIT: FCA) and Ferrari NV (BIT: RACE). Exor coughed up half, or $200 million, of the total funding round.
Digital Assets: A Crypto Wallet with an Automatic Protection Guarantee of $ 1 Million
Civic Technologies along with Coincover launches a unique and first-of-its-kind crypto wallet offering a US$1 million protection guarantee.
Artificial Intelligence: AI Can Provide Advance Warning of Diabetes, the Silent Killer
Researchers at the Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Kanazawa, Japan, trained a computer model to flag patients likely to be afflicted by diabetes. The process, called machine learning, teaches an AI algorithm to recognize patterns from historical data. When running on live data, the algorithm can recognize the patterns it has learned and issue an alert, for example, on the potential for contracting a disease such as diabetes.
The DailyAlts Playbook: College!, Record Unemployment, PE Lobbying Efforts, and Icahn’s Failed Merger
This morning, investors are starting to speculate on the March jobs report set for this Friday from the U.S. Labor Department.