 Tencent will distribute most of its stake in JD.com, effectively offering a $16.4B dividend to shareholders. The move will reduce the Chinese investment powerhouse and gaming/social media company's share in the e-commerce company from 17% to 2.3%. After long being JD's largest stakeholder, Tencent will give the title to Walmart. More: - The move is a response to the regulatory attack from Beijing, which has placed the country's top tech firms squarely in the crosshairs. Tencent is one of their biggest targets.
- Regulators, for example, blocked its proposed $5.3B merger of the country's top two videogame streaming sites, ordered it to stop using exclusive music copyright agreements, and found that WeChat, its subsidiary, illegally transferred user data.
- Sources claim that Tencent has no intent to part with its stakes in other companies.
- As of Sept. 30, Tencent's entire investment portfolio was valued at $185B, with bets in Pinduoduo, Meituan, video platform Kuaishou, Tesla, and Spotify.
- The decision to distribute the stake as opposed to selling it on the public market was intended to prevent a steep drop in its share price and a high tax bill.
- JD's shares dipped 11.2% in Hong Kong trading after the news, the biggest daily percentage decline since its debut in the city in 2020. It closed down 7%.
- Conversely, shares of Tencent, Asia's most valuable listed company, rose 4.2%.
- Ironically, said Mio Kato, a LightStream Research analyst, Tencent's relationships with Pinduoduo and JD have helped it maintain some competitiveness with Alipay.
- The move could thus have some anticompetitive repercussions.
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 Of the 17 unicorns hailing from South America, nine were minted just this year, reports PitchBook. The figures are evidence of a rapidly expanding VC ecosystem, which saw $14.8B in total deal value in 2021. That is over three times higher than the aggregate sums from the prior two years, respectively. More: - A large number of the 772 term sheets signed in 2021 came from foreign investors.
- Though the most active investor in the region is Argentina-based Kaszek with 44 deals, five of the other top 10 firms hail from the U.S. or Europe.
- The sudden rush for Latin America was driven by a simple insight: The region has twice the GDP of Southeast Asia with a comparable population size. Somehow, the latter geography had an active VC ecosystem, while Latin American startups could only find funding from a few early-stage investors.
- The area was ripe for digitalization: Over 40 million people were added to the banking ecosystem in just five months during 2020.
- SoftBank responded by launching a $5B vehicle for the region in 2019.
- Late-stage investors like Tiger Global, D1, DST, and Coatue all piled on, while earlier-stage outfits Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and Benchmark began taking note.
- As valuations began to rise, even late-stage-focused SoftBank began making early-stage bets, going so far as to launch a second fund for the region with $3B.
- There are, of course, headwinds: Redpoint e.ventures' Mathias Schilling notes that valuations will not keep growing at their current pace. Meanwhile, the economy in Brazil is contracting, and interest rates are rising.
- Whether future conditions will permit such astounding exits as Nubank's $45B Brazil/New York dual IPO this month to be repeated remains a question for 2022.
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VC Diversity Efforts Creators Are Mostly Women. Where’s the Money For Women-Led Creator Startups?* *The following summary is based on an article published by The Information by Kaya Yurieff. While the creator economy is set to pull in a total of $5B in funding this year in the U.S., the portion going to female-founded startups was just 4.8% in the first eight months of 2021. - While that is better than the 2.2% for all startups, it is deeply misrepresentative of female participation in the sector.
- While having a male co-founder helps a startup’s chances, they are still not good.
- Creator economy startups with male and female founding teams raised 8.5% of the total funding. That’s lower than the 11.7% of all U.S. startup funding raised by male and female founding teams.
Around 25% of all creator economy startups, 24 out of 126 found in The Informations Creator Economy Database, were either founded or co-founded by women. Moreover,... | |
 Today's Funding 💸 Biotech/Health - Sorriso Pharmaceuticals (Salt Lake City, Utah), anti-inflammatory antibody therapy: $31M A from NEA, Arix Bioscience.
- X-Therma (Richmond, Calif.), regenerative medicine and organ preservation: $13M A led by Lorea AG, participation from Zen11 Holdings, Graphene Ventures, VU Venture Partners, 2b AHEAD Ventures, et al.
- Kiira Health (Los Angeles, Calif.), healthcare provider focused on addressing the needs of young multicultural women: $4M Seed led by 500 Global, Forum VC, participation from Serena Ventures, California Healthcare Foundation, et al.
DevOps - Retool (San Francisco, Calif.), platform that enables developers to build software apps for internal use cases:...
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- Marc Andreessen blocked Jack Dorsey on Twitter for the latter’s comments claiming web3 to be “ultimately a centralized entity with a different label.” He claimed the blockchain is the property of venture capitalists and LPs.
- TikTok rival Triller will merge with video-tech company SeaChange for a combined valuation of ~$5B. The new company, TrillerVerz Corp, could be a leading AI-powered social media platform for content, creators, and commerce.
- Vista Equity will take a majority stake in sales engagement software company Salesloft at a $2.3B valuation.
- Seaya Ventures closed its third flagship fund at $186.7M (€165M) to invest in European startups.
- Elon Musk has now sold 23.1 million shares in Tesla with a total transaction value of $15B.
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 |  | Inside VC's writer/curator Stephen currently lives in Berlin and is pursuing a Master's degree in philosophy. He otherwise spends his time trying his hand at recipes from India and Southeast Asia, escaping it all at the kickboxing gym, and offending aural sensibilities with his band. |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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