Here comes more capital to plow into the fintech sector courtesy of Chinese VC Silk Ventures. How much? Well $500M is aimed at U.S. and European startups focusing on fintech, artificial intelligence and medical tech. Guess the Chinese are looking at buying technology rather then sending their kids to MIT, Stanford, etc and then enticing them to come home.
(Bill Taylor/CEO)
"A venture capital firm backed by the Chinese government is aiming to invest up to $500 million into U.S. and European technology startups.
Silk Ventures, which has offices in Silicon Valley, London, Shenzhen, and Beijing, will put a particular focus on fintech, artificial intelligence, medical technologies and startups specializing in related sciences.
“The mission is to connect technology companies from Europe and the United States, Israel as well, to the Chinese market,” said Silk Ventures Founding Partner Angelica Anton in an interview...
Of the $500 million raised by Silk Ventures, half comes from SASAC, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, which supervises and regulates state-owned enterprises in China.
The remaining half of Silk's fund has been raised from a group of investors the company declined to identify. It said in a statement that it will announce its first investments in July.
The company launched an accelerator based in London's Canary Wharf in 2015, which provides support to China-focused startups.
Breaking into the Chinese market is a challenging prospect for a startup in part due to strict governmental regulations, as well as enormous existing competition in many sectors, or simply the difficulty of winning over locals. Airbnb Inc. in March attempted to tackle this by adopting a new brand name in China: "Aibiying".
Silk Ventures aims to match Chinese corporates with European and American startups producing technologies that can fill the regional demand. The group's VC partners in London and Silicon Valley will focus on sourcing those startups for potential investment.
...The firm will be partly focusing on fintech investments, highlighting blockchain, currency exchange, and “regtech" as key sectors of interest. Regtech is the growing branch of IT that aids regulation, due diligence, financial security and risk management...
Source: Bloomberg