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Softbank Vision Fund
The SoftBank Vision Fund is a venture capital fund founded in 2017. It is managed by SoftBank Investment Advisers, a subsidiary of the SoftBank Group. With over $100 billion in capital, it is the world's largest technology-focused investment fund. In 2019, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 was founded. History The Softbank Vision Fund was created in May 2017 by the SoftBank Group and the Public Investment Fund (PIF). $100 billion was raised with PIF contributing $45 billion, SoftBank contributing $28 billion, the Mubadala Investment Company contributing $15 billion and the rest from other investors including Apple Inc., Apple. Through Softbank Vision Fund, Masayoshi Son explained his intent to invest in all companies developing technologies in line with the global artificial intelligence trends, including various sectors such as finance or transportation. As of early February 2019, the Vision Fund had built up a 4.9% position in Nvidia stock, and then was forced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Carlos, California
San Carlos (Spanish language, Spanish for "St. Charles") is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States. The population is 30,722 per the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. History Native Americans Prior to the Spain, Spanish arrival in 1769, the land of San Carlos was occupied by a group of Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans who called themselves the Lamchins. While they considered themselves to have a separate identity from other local tribes, modern scholars consider them to be a part of the Ohlone or Costanoan tribes that inhabited the Bay Area. The Lamchins referred to the area of their primary residenceprobably on the north bank of Pulgas creekas "Cachanihtac", which included their word for vermin. When the Spanish arrived, they translated this as "the fleas", or "las Pulgas", giving many places and roads their modern names. The Native American life was one of traditional hunting and gathering. There was plentiful game and fowl ava ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AI Boom
The AI boom is an ongoing period of rapid Progress in artificial intelligence, progress in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) that started in the late 2010s before gaining international prominence in the early 2020s. Examples include large language models and generative AI applications developed by OpenAI as well as Protein structure prediction, protein folding prediction led by Google DeepMind. This period is sometimes referred to as an AI spring, to contrast it with previous AI winters. History In 2012, a University of Toronto research team used artificial neural networks and deep learning techniques to lower the error rate below 25% for the AlexNet, first time during the ImageNet challenge for object recognition in computer vision. The event catalyzed the AI boom later that decade, when many alumni of the ImageNet challenge became leaders in the tech industry. In March 2016, AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol in AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol, a five-game match, marking the first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Special-purpose Acquisition Company
A special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC; ), also known as a blank check company or a blind-pool stock offering, is a shell corporation listed on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring (or merging with) a private company, thus taking the private company public through a procedure which requires less regulatory filings and has less safeguards for investors than the initial public offering (IPO) process. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), SPACs are created specifically to pool funds to finance a future merger or acquisition opportunity within a set timeframe; these opportunities usually have yet to be identified while raising funds. In the U.S., SPACs are registered with the SEC and considered publicly traded companies. The general public may buy their shares on stock exchanges before any merger or acquisition takes place. For this reason they have at times been referred to as the "poor man's private equity funds." The majority of companies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coupang
Coupang, Inc. () is a US-based technology company headquartered in Seattle, Seattle, Washington and incorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law. Founded in 2010 by Bom Kim, the company operates a retail business, food delivery service, and OTT streaming service, with offices in South Korea, Taiwan, the United States, India, and Singapore. The company expanded into digital streaming, video streaming distribution with the launch of its Coupang Play, Coupang Play service. Coupang is often referred to as the "Amazon (company), Amazon of South Korea", due to its position and corporate size in the South Korean online market. Coupang was named to the Fortune 200 in 2023 and 2024. Overview The first marketplace and largest online retailer in South Korea, Coupang's annual revenue as of 2021 is US$18.4 billion. The company's Rocket Delivery network provides same-day or next-day delivery of more than five million unique items. Coupang claims that 99.6 percent of its orders ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fair Value
In accounting, fair value is a rational and unbiased estimate of the potential market price of a good, service, or asset. The derivation takes into account such objective factors as the costs associated with production or replacement, market conditions and matters of supply and demand. Subjective factors may also be considered such as the risk characteristics, the cost of and return on capital, and individually perceived utility. Economic understanding Market price There are two schools of thought about the relation between the market price and fair value in any form of market, but especially with regard to tradable assets: * The efficient-market hypothesis asserts that, in a well organized, reasonably transparent market, the market price is generally equal to or close to the fair value, as investors react quickly to incorporate new information about relative scarcity, utility, or potential returns in their bids; see also Rational pricing. * Behavioral finance asserts t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Initial Public Offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment banks, who also arrange for the shares to be listed on one or more stock exchanges. Through this process, colloquially known as ''floating'', or ''going public'', a privately held company is transformed into a public company. Initial public offerings can be used to raise new equity capital for companies, to monetize the investments of private shareholders such as company founders or private equity investors, and to enable easy trading of existing holdings or future capital raising by becoming publicly traded. After the IPO, shares are traded freely in the open market at what is known as the free float. Stock exchanges stipulate a minimum free float both in absolute terms (the total value as determined by the share price multiplied ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WeWork
WeWork Inc., headquartered in New York City, is a provider of coworking spaces, including physical and virtual shared spaces, in approximately 600 buildings in 125 cities. WeWork was founded in 2010 by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey. Over the following 10 years, the company raised $12.8 billion in financing at valuations as high as $47 billion, mostly from the SoftBank Vision Fund, led by Masayoshi Son. In September 2019, the company filed documentation to become a public company and revealed issues with corporate governance. Investors forced both the cancellation of the IPO and the resignation of Neumann. The company filed for bankruptcy in November 2023. As part of the bankruptcy reorganization, in 2024, Cupar Grimmond (an affiliate of Yardi Systems) acquired a 60% stake in the company, 20% was acquired by affiliates of SoftBank, and 20% was acquired by other investors. The company shrank its operations, selling all owned real estate and cancelling or amending hundreds o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elliott Management
Elliott Investment Management L.P. is an American investment management firm. It is also one of the largest activist funds in the world. It is the management affiliate of American hedge funds Elliott Associates L.P. and Elliott International Limited. The Elliott Corporation was founded by Paul Singer, who is CEO of the management company, based in New York City. As of the first quarter of 2015, Elliott's portfolio is worth over $8 billion. By 2009, over a third "of Elliott's portfolio was concentrated in distressed securities, typically in the debt of bankrupt or near-bankrupt companies." The firm moved its headquarters from New York City to West Palm Beach, Florida in 2020. Overview Singer created Elliott Associates in January 1977, starting with $1.3 million from friends and family and choosing the Elliott brand as it is his middle name. In its earliest years, the firm focused on convertible arbitrage. Since the 1987 stock market crash and early 1990s recession, however, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zume
Zume, Inc. was an American manufacturing-technology company headquartered in Camarillo, California. Founded in 2015 as an automated pizza parlor, in 2020 the company shifted to food packaging and delivery logistics. In June 2023, the company was shut down. History Zume was founded in 2015 as Zume Pizza by Chairman and CEO Alex Garden and Julia Collins. In 2016, it raised $6 million in Series A investment funding from Jerry Yang and SignalFire, a venture capital firm. Zume's initial business proposition was the automated production and delivery of pizza, which would largely be made by robots and cooked en route to customers. In September 2016, it delivered its first pizzas. They were cooked in a van equipped with 56 GPS-equipped automated ovens, timed to be ready shortly before arrival at the address, and then sliced by a self-cleaning robot cutter. The pizza preparation process was partly automated by November 2016. The company secured a patent on cooking during deliver ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katerra
Katerra was an American technology-driven off-site construction company. It was founded in 2015 by Michael Marks, former CEO of Flextronics and former Tesla interim CEO, along with Fritz Wolff, the executive chairman of The Wolff Co. Katerra was listed on LinkedIn's "Top Startup Companies" to work for in 2017. In May 2020, it was announced that as a part of an additional $200 million raise, COO and former Schlumberger CEO Paal Kibsgaard would take over from Michael Marks as CEO of Katerra in June. Some of its independent assets in other regions, including the Middle East would continue to exist as independent entity. In June 2021, Katerra announced plans to shut down, laying off remaining employees without paying out earned personal time off or severance. History The company was founded in 2015. In January 2018, Katerra took an $835 million investment from Softbank. The investment was made from the Vision Fund. The company manufactured large building components off-site, parti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rappi
Rappi is a Latin American super-app headquartered in Bogotá, Colombia, with offices in São Paulo and Mexico City. It was founded in 2015 by Simón Borrero, Sebastian Mejía, and Felipe Villamarín. History Rappi was founded in 2015 by three Colombian entrepreneurs: Simón Borrero, Felipe Villamarin, and Sebastián Mejía. Rappi entered Y Combinator's Winter 2016 batch, generating additional investment. In August 2018, the company raised another $200 million in funding. SoftBank became a major stakeholder in Rappi in April 2019 with a $1 billion investment that valued Rappi at $3.5 billion. In January 2019, Borrero, Villamarin, and Mejía were listed as part of ''Bloomberg's'' 50 Most Influential people and Rappi was highlighted as a company that is “transforming Latin America”. In April 2024 Tiago Azevedo was hired as chief financial officer of Rappi. In February 2019, Simon Borrero was awarded the "Empresario del año" (Businessman of the year) award from the Colo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
