Nvidia currently dominates the AI chip market with its GPU chips.
OpenAI chief Sam Altman is reportedly also in talks with investors in the United Arab Emirates to raise an eye-watering $5 trillion to $7 trillion for a new AI chip project.
Altman has reportedly met with a number of potential investors, chip industry experts and others across the globe, including SoftBank’s Son, for the new AI chip initiative.
Shift focus (from Alibaba) to AIA new chip project would be line with the company’s new focus on AI.
Shares of SoftBank closed 2.8% higher on Monday after Son’s AI chip project news broke on Saturday.
TravelPerk, a business travel management platform targeted at SMEs, has raised $105 million in a fresh equity-based round of financing led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2.
“In today’s climate, where startup funding is down by half and valuations are down across the board, this is a healthy and sober valuation,” Meir told TechCrunch.
Well-traveledFounded in 2015, Barcelona-based TravelPerk sells an all-in-one platform for companies to book, manage, and report all their domestic and international travel.
Customers can also extend the platform through integrations with expense management systems like Spendesk and HR software such as HiBob.
“[An] IPO has never been an objective per se for TravelPerk,” Meir said.
Softbank is selling its Open Opportunity Fund to its chairman and managing partner, Paul Judge, and Marcelo Claure, who is being appointed the fund’s vice chairman and general partner.
Judge and Claure will fully own the firm’s $100 million Open Opportunity Fund 1, the $150 million Fund 2, as well as the entire portfolio.
Claure called the acquisition a “significant milestone,” saying it “demonstrates a concrete move towards more diverse representation within all layers of the venture capital ecosystem.”Softbank rebranded its Opportunity Growth Fund to Open Opportunity Fund (OOF) earlier this year, and appointed Judge as its chairman, who became co-owner of the Fund.
Fund 1 deployed $100 million in 75 Black-and-Latino companies, yielding seven exits and 46 follow-on rounds.
Fund 1 companies may also receive funding from Fund 2 on a “case-by-case basis,” Judge said.
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