Campbell Kwan
| September 14, 2021 — 23:09 GMT (00:09 BST)
| Topic: Tech Industry
SoftBank has announced it will allocate an additional $3 billion to invest in technology companies in the Latin American market.
Labelled as the SoftBank Latin America Fund II, the new fund builds on SoftBank’s initial Latin America Fund, which has been allocated $5 billion.
The initial Latin America Fund was first announced in March 2019 and was formerly called the Innovation Fund. So far, that fund has invested $3.5 billion into 48 companies, with those companies having a fair value of $6.9 billion as of June 30, the company said.
SoftBank said Fund II would be used to invest in technology-enabled companies across industries at every stage of their development, from seed to public.
The team running the new fund will be a 60-person operation based out of Miami, São Paulo, and Mexico City.
“There is so much innovation and disruption taking place in Latin America, and I believe the business opportunities there have never been stronger. Latin America is a critical part of our strategy — this is why we are expanding our presence and doubling down on our commitment with Marcelo at the helm,” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said.
The announcement of the new fund follows SoftBank Group last month reporting a 39% year-on-year dip for its first-quarter results, posting ¥761.5 billion in net income. One of the factors for the dip was increased volatility faced by SoftBank’s investments in the China market due to the local’s government crackdown on tech.
China’s local tech crackdown has so far seen Alibaba — which SoftBank has a stake in – be fined 18.2 billion yuan by China’s State Administration for Market Regulation.
Meanwhile, Didi, another of SoftBank’s Chinese investments, has been removed from app stores in China and is currently under cyber security review.
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Campbell Kwan
| September 14, 2021 — 23:09 GMT (00:09 BST)
| Topic: Tech Industry