Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund, Temasek, Plans Further AI Investment Including South Korean Memory Stocks

If I were running some money at Temasek I would not be pleased that someone in South Korea was blabbing to the media. Not at all. Shades of BYD's CEO saying, back in the day, that Berkshire Hathaway was planning to up their stake in his company.*

From Bloomberg, August 11/12:

South Korean chipmakers rallied as risk appetite returned after last month’s rout and traders weighed a local media report that Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pte plans to invest in Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc.

Shares of the chip duo briefly extended gains to more than 8% after Asia Business Daily Temasek Contacts S. Korea to Invest in Samsung, Hynix: Daily that the state fund plans to invest directly in the two chipmakers through its internal investment team, and is mulling timing. Samsung ended the day up 6.7% while SK Hynix rose 5.5%. The benchmark Kospi gained 3.7%.

Temasek said in response to queries from Bloomberg News that it didn’t seek advice from the Korean government on the timing of investments in either SK Hynix or Samsung, and that it first invested in both companies more than two years ago.

The chipmakers saw a brutal selloff in July as doubts grew over the pace of rapid AI infrastructure buildout, leading to an unwinding of leveraged positions. The shares have been rebounding recently, amid growing expectations the companies will bolster shareholder returns with buybacks and more dividends.

“It is a positive confidence signal, but I would not see it as a game changer or the main driver of the Kospi rebound,” said Albert Yong, managing partner at hedge fund Petra Capital Management, referring to the local report. “Samsung and SK Hynix had become technically oversold despite still-strong fundamentals.”....

 

....MUCH MORE 

Now back in July the fund said they would double their AI exposure by 2031, noteworthy not because they named names but because they take a fairly conservative approach (growth-at-a-reasonable-price+some moonshots) to investing:

Temasek’s Net Portfolio Value Grows to S$518 billion, up S$49 billion from Last Year 

There are other reports that this would be the big (401 billion USD) fund's first foray into Korea, which seems a bit surprising.**
*August 2009 - China's BYD says Buffett wants to raise stake (BRK.A: 1211.HK)

[this comment did not please Buffet or Munger - Don't be tellin' people to go frontrun our buying] 

**Singapore's other SWF, GIC is even more conservative and has $936 billion AUM.

"Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek thinks AI is going to pay off"

From The Register, July 9:

Downer for doomers as conservative investor plans to lift portfolio exposure by 150 percent, and even more once it adds electrification ventures 

Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, one of the world’s largest investment houses, intends to massively increase its investment in AI over the next five years – both for its own use and across its portfolio.

Temasek holds over $400 billion in assets and around six percent of those are currently tied up in AI companies, including OpenAI.

At its annual review meeting yesterday, the fund announced it intends to increase its exposure to AI until it reaches 15 percent in 2031. Temasek said it will target five areas: energy and data centres, semiconductors, cloud services providers, foundation models, and AI applications & software infrastructure.

Temasek also sees rising demand for AI as one reason to grow its investment in infrastructure from one percent of its portfolio to five percent.

“We see compelling opportunities in ageing infrastructure and grid modernisation, renewable and nuclear energy, energy storage, and breakthrough decarbonisation technologies, underpinned by rising electrification demand and AI-driven data centre growth,” the fund said.

The fund is eating its own dog food, too, by “embedding AI into how we invest and operate, augmenting human decision-making, sharpening workflows, and enhancing productivity across the firm.”....

....MUCH MORE, including sidebars and The Register's take on the scars from Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX 

"South-east Asia digital economy to surpass US$300 billion in 2025, rides AI wave"

From The Straits Times, November 11: 

With Singapore continuing to be its anchor, the South-east Asia digital economy is expected to exceed US$300 billion (S$390 billion) by the end of 2025, according to a study out on Nov 11.

Gross merchandise value (GMV) – the value of goods sold on e-commerce platforms, among others – for the region hit US$299 billion as at June 2025.

The findings are from an annual report by consultancy firm Bain & Company, Temasek and Google, and covers Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. 

In 2025, the report also expanded to cover four more Asean countries – Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

When those four countries are included, revenue hit US$100 billion, and GMV hit US$305 billion.

This means that the digital economy of the region in GMV has exceeded the inaugural report’s forecast of US$200 billion made a decade ago.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is also expected to make the region ripe for transformation, especially with region’s large internet population and its keen interest in AI, the report said.  

Singapore is the region’s AI hub, with some 495 AI start-ups out of the region’s 680 AI start-ups located in Singapore.

Over US$2.3 billion has been invested in AI-related start-ups....

....MUCH MORE 

Singapore’s Top Real-Estate Asset Managers Mull Merger That Could Create $150 Billion Entity

From the Wall Street Journal, November 2:

The two property developers could start laying the groundwork for the process as early as next year 

Two of Singapore’s biggest real-estate asset managers are exploring a merger that could create one of Asia-Pacific’s top property companies with more than US$150 billion in assets under management, people familiar with the process said.

Temasek-owned Mapletree Investments and Singapore-listed CapitaLand Investment

are considering a potential business combination, people familiar with the matter said. The two property developers are likely to start laying the groundwork for the process as early as next year, the people said.

The plans are in the very initial stages, and a deal may or may not materialize, the people said.

“CapitaLand Investment remains committed to delivering long-term shareholder value and routinely evaluates investment opportunities aligned with its strategy,” a spokesperson said, adding that the company doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation.

Temasek and Mapletree Investments both declined to comment.

One person said the process is part of the recent moves by Temasek-owned entities to evaluate options for growing their businesses into larger, stronger global entities. Temasek owns 100% of Mapletree Investments and 54% of CapitaLand Investment.

In 2023, Temasek portfolio companies Keppel Offshore & Marine and Sembcorp Marine merged to form Seatrium, creating a unified entity that ranks among the world’s leading rig builders. In 2021, CapitaLand announced a comprehensive restructuring plan that brought together its multibillion-dollar fund-management and hospitality businesses.

As of Aug. 13, 2025, CapitaLand Investment had 117 billion Singapore dollars in assets under management, equivalent to around US$90 billion, held via stakes in seven listed real-estate investment trusts and business trusts....

....MUCH MORE 

A Name To Know: "PsiQuantum Raises $1 Billion, Says Its Computer Will Be Ready in Two Years"

From The Wall Street Journal, September 10: 

The funding gives the quantum computing startup a valuation of $7 billion 

PsiQuantum, which is targeting an aggressive 2027 timeline to deliver a full-scale commercial-grade quantum computer, said Wednesday that it collected $1 billion in its latest fundraise.

The funding round, led by existing investors BlackRock, Temasek and Baillie Gifford, and including new investors such as Nvidia’s venture-capital arm, brings the startup’s valuation to $7 billion.

PsiQuantum also announced a collaboration with Nvidia around integrating quantum hardware with AI chips, among other areas.

The Series E financing comes amid a surge of recent activity in the space. Quantinuum’s latest fundraise earlier this month gave it a valuation of $10 billion, IQM raised $320 million at a $1 billion valuation, and Infleqtion said it would go public via a special-purpose acquisition company at a $1.8 billion valuation.

“I think this is the investment world sort of putting a flag in the ground and declaring that it’s game-on for quantum computing,” said PsiQuantum co-founder and Chief Executive Jeremy O’Brien.

The technology, which promises to power certain computations that are virtually impossible for today’s computers, could transform everything, including the way companies make medicine, invest money, deliver internet and encrypt information.

While many competitors are starting small and gradually building larger and larger systems, PsiQuantum differentiates itself with a bold approach. It plans to build a 1-million-qubit fault-tolerant machine right off the bat. A fault tolerant quantum computer is one that can correct the small, unavoidable errors that arise in computation and consistently deliver reliable results.

A quantum computer in Brisbane, Australia, is expected to be online by the end of 2027 and one in Chicago in 2028, the company said. Some of the newly raised money will also go toward building large-scale test systems and ramping up production of materials.

Luke Ward, an investment manager on the private companies team at investor Baillie Gifford, said PsiQuantum’s manufacturing maturity and its ability to lean on an existing supply chain are part of the attraction. PsiQuantum manufactures its quantum chipset at GlobalFoundries in upstate New York. Baillie Gifford has invested more than $100 million in PsiQuantum so far....

....MUCH MORE 

As noted on Nvidia's Quantum Day (March 20, 2025), the publicly traded names do not attract:

Nvidia GTC: The Company Holds It's First Quantum Day, "Quantum Stocks" Down 9% to 19% (NVDA; IONQ; QBTS: RGTI)  

....Nvidia CEO Says He Was Surprised That Publicly Held Quantum Firms Exist 

Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said he didn’t realize there were publicly traded quantum-computing companies when he made earlier comments that caused industry stocks to crash.

Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said he didn’t realize there were publicly traded quantum-computing companies when he made earlier comments that caused industry stocks to crash.

“My first reaction was, I didn’t know they were public. How can a quantum company be public?” Huang said at an event Thursday focused on the still-nascent technology....

March 7 -  "As NVIDIA’s Quantum Day Nears, Analysts Suggest Event is More Than a Gesture" (NVDA)

You know what looks cheap? Nvidia looks cheap.

That's not to say it can't get cheaper but to quote some of the old-time traders: "Well bought is half sold."

$111.29 last, up $0.72 (+0.65%) in late pre-market trading.

And the outro:

Although we see no rush to own the current batch of publicly traded names, we do pay attention to what the chatter is. Some of our previous links and more recent comments were wrapped in January 8's "Quantum Stocks Drop as Nvidia CEO Sees Use Years Away":

Ditto and double ditto for the quantum computing stocks. There will be at least one and possibly three bear markets before they are even close to earning money.

However, for the diehard next-big-thing wannabes we did link to Barron's "...How to Pretend You Understand Quantum Computing." on Dec 14.

Here's Nvidia:

NVIDIA GTC 2025: Quantum Day to Illuminate the Future of Quantum Computing

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Industry Visionaries to Unveil What’s Next in AI at GTC 2025

Quantum Day Conference Sessions  

This is Goofy: "Quantum-computing stocks are soaring as investors place bets on ‘the next big thing’ in tech"

Our general rules for shorting: In a bull market only short frauds, and even then be aware that what you think you are seeing may take quite a while to become evident to the wider market. Or may prove to have been an hallucination on the part of the prospective short seller.

In a bear market you can expand your shortable universe by also using shorts based on valuation.

Here are three names to keep in mind as valuation shorts should the overall market begin to crack sometime in the next year or two. From MarketWatch, December 11....

*****

We happened to catch the Google story via the NYT on Monday evening: "Quantum Computing Inches Closer to Reality After Another Google Breakthrough" (GOOG).

The next trading day it was up ~5%. Today it set a new all-time-high.

If interested we have quite a few posts on D-Wave and to a lesser extent Rigetti. Use the 'search blog' box upper left. 

One final word on risk. If an overvalued company you are short actually has some worthwhile technology there is a real risk that they might be acquired for that technology, which can wreck your whole day.

Or more importantly your annual bonus.

PsiQuantum is different. March 24 -  "Quantum computing startup PsiQuantum raising at least $750 million, sources say"

Following Losses "Temasek Slashes Investments in Early-Stage Companies by 88%"

From PYMNTS.com, June 4:

Temasek, which is Singapore’s state-owned investment group and one of the world’s biggest investors, reportedly slashed its investments in early-stage companies by 88% over a three-year period.

The group’s investments in these companies dropped from $4.4 billion in 2021 to $509 million in 2024 as it shifted its focus to more conservative investments, the Financial Times (FT) reported Wednesday (June 4), citing data from Tracxn.

So far this year, Temasek has committed $70 million to early-stage companies, according to the report.

The report attributed the investment group’s change in strategy to rising interest rates, its loss of hundreds of millions of dollars on some collapsed startups, and its belief that it is now harder for high-risk unlisted companies to go public.

Temasek told the FT that it capped its early-stage investments at 6% of its portfolio in 2021, adding that it is “cognizant of the risks and challenges early-stage companies face.”

“We have seen a market pullback in investment flows into early-stage investing since 2022 and, as a result, have adopted a more cautious approach to new investments,” Temasek said, per the report.

The investment group, which has a $300 billion portfolio, now makes bigger commitments to a smaller number of companies that are closer to going public, according to the report.

One of the investments in collapsed startups that sparks the change was Temasek’s write-off of its $275 million investment in the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which went bankrupt in 2022. Temasek was one of the biggest investors in FTX, per the report....

....MUCH MORE 

Here's one of the investments that we noted:

January 22, 2025 -  SoftBank and Temesek-Backed Aquaculture Unicorn Apparently A Fraud  

Sometimes I wonder if SoftBank actually does due diligence. The poster child for bad SoftBank deals was WeWork but there have been quite a few others.

It wouldn't be much more than a curiosity except for the fact Mr. Son et Cie is going to be heading up the $500 billion American AI thingy, Stargate.

SoftBank and Temesek-Backed Aquaculture Unicorn Apparently A Fraud

Sometimes I wonder if SoftBank actually does due diligence. The poster child for bad SoftBank deals was WeWork but there have been quite a few others.

It wouldn't be much more than a curiosity except for the fact Mr. Son et Cie is going to be heading up the $500 billion American AI thingy, Stargate.

From Singapore's Straits Times, January 22:

Indonesian unicorn eFishery allegedly faked most of its sales

Singapore – One of Indonesia’s most prominent start-ups, eFishery, may have inflated its revenue and profit over several years, according to an internal investigation triggered by a whistle-blower’s claim about the company’s accounting.

A preliminary, ongoing probe into the agritech start-up – backed by investors, including Japan’s SoftBank Group and Singapore’s Temasek – estimates that management inflated revenue by almost US$600 million (S$811 million) in the nine months to September in 2024, according to a 52-page draft report circulated among investors and reviewed by Bloomberg News. That would mean more than 75 per cent of the reported figures were fake, the report said. 

The company, which deploys feeders to fish and shrimp farmers in Indonesia, was a darling of the nation’s start-up scene and turned unicorn with a valuation of US$1.4 billion when G42, an artificial intelligence firm controlled by the United Arab Emirates royal, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, backed its latest funding round. Unicorns are start-ups that reach a valuation of US$1 billion and are not listed on the stock market.

The start-up has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to modernise the country’s fish industry, providing farmers with smart feeding devices as well as feed and then buying their produce to sell into the broader market.

Investors were initially enticed by its profitability at a time when layoffs, chief executive officer resignations and plummeting valuations in the tech sector dominated headlines. It presented a US$16 million profit for the first nine months of 2024 to investors, but the investigation commissioned by the board alleges the firm actually generated a US$35.4 million loss.

Revenue for the period was estimated at US$157 million, rather than the US$752 million investors were told, according to the report. Management also inflated revenue and profit numbers for several previous years, the report said.

The report was initiated after a whistle-blower approached a board member with allegations that the accounts were not accurate, according to people familiar with the matter....

....MUCH MORE

Data Center Operator Equinix, Canadian Pension Fund Manager CPPIB and Singapore's GIC Form $15B-Plus US Hyperscale Data Centre JV

GIC is one of the three funds that Singapore's Ministry of Finance uses to manage the country's reserves and other national financial assets, the other two being MAS and Temasek—which gets the bulk of our interest because Temasek tends to swing for the fences whereas GIC is much more conservative, benchmarking growth above the worldwide inflation rate.

That said, GIC is a major sovereign wealth fund with US$847bn in assets.

From Asian real estate mavens Mingtiandi, October 2:

Singapore sovereign giant GIC, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), and US-based data centre provider Equinix have formed a joint venture to develop data centre campuses in the US, with the partners targeting to raise over $15 billion to fund the construction of hyperscale facilities that will eventually provide more than 1.5 gigawatts of capacity.

Under the terms of the agreement announced Tuesday, GIC and CPPIB will each hold a 37.5 percent interest in the JV, with Equinix taking the remaining quarter stake. In addition to the partners’ equity commitments, the venture also expects to take on debt to raise its total investable capital to more than $15 billion over time.

The JV marks the latest investment in the digital infrastructure space by Equinix’s partners, with GIC having previously teamed up with the NASDAQ-listed player for data centre ventures in Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Americas. CPPIB last month announced that it had teamed up with Blackstone in the $16 billion acquisition of Australia-based data centre platform AirTrunk....

....MUCH MORE

"Ola Electric surges in India’s biggest listing in two years"

From TechCrunch, August 8/9:

Ola Electric, the largest electric two-wheeler maker in India, jumped as much as 14.4% on its public debut Friday in what is the biggest listing among Indian firms in two years.

Shares of the Bengaluru-based firm, which counts SoftBank and Temasek among its backers, jumped to 87 rupees ($1.04), higher than the upper price band of 76 Indian rupees. The company filed for an IPO at a 26% lower valuation than the $5.4 billion it achieved in a funding round in October 2023, and significantly below the $6.5 billion to $8 billion range initially targeted for the IPO.

At 87 rupees, Ola Electric commands nearly $4.6 billion in market cap....

....MUCH MORE

I wouldn't use the word "surges" but it is a nice pop. We don't have any interest in new flotations, you end up getting too much of the cold ones, too little of the hot ones, have no free-trading pricing history to guide purchases or sales etc. On the other hand the information contained in offering documents can be very valuable.

Here's Ola's Red Herring dated July 28 (461 page PDF), I'll see if I can round up a final prospectus.

The Hindustan Times has some details on the subscription:

....The IPO received robust investor interest and was subscribed 4.27 times. Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) and retail subscribed 5.31 times and 3.92 times their respective allotments while non-institutional investors (high net-worth individuals) bid 2.4 times the shares allocated to them....

....MUCH MORE

Asian Property Development: Three Data Center Operators And A Warehouser

The Asian data center business is coming on strong. Three from Mingtiandi (Asian real estate intelligence):

July 4

PDG Completes First Phase of 150MW Data Centre Campus in Southern Malaysia 

Princeton Digital Group has delivered the 52-megawatt initial phase of its 150MW JH1 data centre campus, coming less than 14 months after it acquired the development site in Malaysia’s southern Johor state.

The AI-ready project will generate renewable energy through the installation of rooftop solar panels, Warburg Pincus-backed PDG said Wednesday in a release. In May the firm secured a $280 million green loan for JH1, hailing it as a major milestone towards minimising resource consumption and emissions by the region’s artificial intelligence infrastructure....

....MUCH MORE

July 11

Keppel DC REIT Enters Japan With $140M Tokyo Data Centre Buy

Keppel DC REIT has agreed to buy a western Tokyo data centre at a deal value of JPY 23.4 billion ($140 million), taking advantage of low borrowing costs to secure the trust’s first asset in Japan.

The Singapore-listed REIT will hold a 98.47 percent effective interest in the property, known as Tokyo Data Centre 1, while sponsor Keppel Ltd will acquire the remaining 1.53 percent, the trust’s manager said Thursday in a release. The seller is an unrelated third party.

The precise location wasn’t disclosed for the freehold multi-storey property, which was completed in 2019 and offers a net lettable area of 190,166 square feet (17,667 square metres). It is master-leased on a triple-net basis to a Fortune Global 500 company and hyperscaler with a remaining lease term of roughly seven years, according to Temasek-backed Keppel...

....MUCH MORE

July 12
Vnet Founder Gives Up Take-Private Bid as Blackstone-Backed Data Centre Firm Stays Listed

Vnet operates more than 50 data centres across China

Vnet Group founder Josh Chen has withdrawn his long-standing offer to take the Chinese data centre operator private, arguing that the NASDAQ-listed firm would be better served remaining publicly traded.

Beijing-based Vnet confirmed Chen’s decision on Thursday after a Bloomberg report broke the news earlier in the day. Chen, who serves as Vnet’s co-chair and interim CEO, had made a non-binding proposal in September 2022 to acquire all the outstanding ordinary shares of the company, whose backers include private equity giant Blackstone....

....MUCH MORE

Also Mingtiandi, July 11:

Warehouse Developer Panattoni Breaks Ground on First India Project Near Delhi

Panattoni Park NH71 is the first of several planned projects in India

Industrial developer Panattoni broke ground this week on a warehouse park in India’s national capital region as the US company’s first project in the country.

Situated on National Highway 352 within the Jhajjar district of Haryana, some 60 kilometres (37 miles) west of New Delhi, the Grade A park will offer 32,000 square metres (344,445 square feet) of space on a site measuring 66,000 square metres, Panattoni said in a release....

....MUCH MORE

Previous visits to Mingtiandi focused on China property woes:  

2021 China Property: "Kaisa Confirms Default on Offshore Notes, Plans Restructuring of $11.8B in Debt"

2022 China's Real Estate Developer Crisis Has Not Gone Away

2022 "Sunac China Warns of Likely Default on $940M in Onshore Bonds"

....You have to love this rather droll comment: 

Mega-projects like Chengdu Sunac Cultural Tourism City Water and Snow World in Chengdu might have been ill-advised

Meanwhile, In Britain: "How facial recognition technology has changed policing"

This is nothing new for our Chinese readers and it is no surprise that the most surveilled Western city is keen on the technology but it is still a bit jarring when you think through the implications.

From The Times, April 5:

Scanning tool is the biggest game-changer for officers since DNA, says Met’s intelligence director

Police use vans with facial recognition cameras that scan the streets

Similar to the government’s artificial intelligence safety conference last year, the planned policy statement includes “guardrails and safeguards” that it ­believes will demonstrate to the public how the controversial technology will not impinge on their privacy. There are also hopes that it can be introduced at fixed cameras at railway stations.

Live facial recognition uses cameras attached to the top of police vans to scan the faces of people as they walk past, immediately assessing them against a wanted list and alerting officers if there is a match.

Chris Philp, the minister for policing, said that it had “revolutionised” crime detection and £230 million would be spent on police technology, including more facial recognition vans, over the next four years....

....MUCH MORE

If interested we have a few hundred posts on facial recognition and attempts at defeating same including this oldie-but-goodie from 2018:

ICYMI: The Most Valuable AI Start-up Inthe World Does Facial Recognition

Some thought us mad with our focus on countermeasures to the surveillance state. But there was a method to that madness.

We've looked at responses ranging from simple dazzle camouflage back in 2013's How to Hide From Cameras:

To hairstyles + makeup that confuse facial recognition algos:

...but this raises its own set of problems, not the least of which is 

taking a half hour to apply just so you can go down to the lobby.

To Hyperface clothing with thousands of pseudo-facial "hits" that simply overwhelm the computer:
"Anti-Surveillance Clothing Aims to Hide Wearers From Facial Recognition "

From the scholarly stuff such as "Fooling The Machine: The Byzantine Science of Deceiving Artificial Intelligence".
To, as noted in ""Magic AI: 'These are the Optical Illusions that Trick, Fool, and Flummox Computers.":

...First though a bit of housekeeping.
Just so you know, I don't actually use the make-up techniques featured in the earlier posts. Despite the fact they have some efficacy at fooling the camera they make you look like a moron to human observers on the street. Better to just put on some glasses and blend into the crowd.

Can you pick out the Kennedys in this photo?

Here's why we cared: There is big money in this stuff!!
From Bloomberg, April 8: 

China Now Has the Most Valuable AI Startup in the World

SenseTime Group Ltd. has raised $600 million from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and other investors at a valuation of more than $3 billion, becoming the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence startup.

The company, which specializes in systems that analyze faces and images on an enormous scale, said it closed a Series C round in recent months in which Singaporean state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte and retailer Suning.com Co. also participated. SenseTime didn’t outline individual investments, but Alibaba was said to have sought the biggest stake in the three-year-old startup.

With the deal, SenseTime has doubled its valuation in a few months. Backed by Qualcomm Inc., it underscores its status as one of a crop of homegrown firms spearheading Beijing’s ambition to become the leader in AI by 2030. And it’s a contributor to the world’s biggest system of surveillance: if you’ve ever been photographed with a Chinese-made phone or walked the streets of a Chinese city, chances are your face has been digitally crunched by SenseTime software built into more than 100 million mobile devices.

The latest financing will bankroll investments in parallel fields such as autonomous driving and augmented reality, cover the growing cost of AI talent and shore up its computing power. It’s developing a service code-named “Viper” to parse data from thousands of live camera feeds -- a platform it hopes will prove invaluable in mass surveillance. And it’s already in talks to raise another round of funds and targeting a valuation of more than $4.5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

“We’re going to explore several new strategic directions and that’s why we shall spend more money on building infrastructure,” SenseTime co-founder Xu Li said in an interview. The company turned profitable in 2017 and wants to grow its workforce by a third to 2,000 by the end of this year. “For the past three years the average revenue growth has been 400 percent.”...MUCH MORE

Both Futurism and Quartz zoomed in (CCTV term) on the surveillance bit:
World’s Most Valuable AI Startup Also Happens To Be Part of “the World’s Biggest System of Surveillance”
The billion-dollar, Alibaba-backed AI company that’s quietly watching people in China

Some of our previous posts on various related subjects:
"The selling of facial recognition technology—and the staggering consequences"
Facial recognition In China

We'll be coming back to what has become a bit of an obsession on the blog, and the countermeasures thereto, but for now, just some of the applications. Remember, this isn't the state of the art, this is stuff that is being deployed right now.
The state of the art is really spooky.... 

"Who Owns Your Face?"
"China’s Surveillance State: AI Startups, Tech Giants Are At The Center Of The Government’s Plans"
"Casino ATMs are Using Facial Recognition to Spot Money Launderers in Macau"
DNA Techniques Could Transform Facial Recognition Technology
 Bank Robbers’ Aluminum Invisibility Cloaks Foiled by CCTV
Memo: New York Calling For Face Recognition Cameras At Bridges, Tunnels
Adversarial Images, Or How To Fool Machine Vision
Cargill Invests In Facial Recognition For Cows
And many, many more. Use the 'search blog' box if interested. 

Now, if you'll excuse me for a bit, I have to go out in public for a bite to eat:

"Another Way To Fool The Facial Recognition Algos"

Temasek Chairman's Statement on FTX Internal Review

Temasek is one of the class acts of the Sovereign Wealth Fund world and their $275 million hit on FTX, despite being tiny in comparison with assets under management, had to sting. 

From The Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, May 31:

Temasek Chairman Comments on FTX

Temasek’s Chairman Lim Boon Heng is a former politician in the country. He was a member of Parliament between 1980 and 2011, and served in the Cabinet between 2001 and 2011. He also served as Chairman of the People’s Action Party between 2004 and 2011. Temasek suffered a writedown of US$ 275 billion due to the FTX collapse.

In a letter on Temasek’s website, he said: “With FTX, as alleged by prosecutors and as admitted by key executives at FTX and its affiliates, there was fraudulent conduct intentionally hidden from investors, including Temasek. Nevertheless, we are disappointed with the outcome of our investment, and the negative impact on our reputation.”

He also expressed the necessity of investing in “new sectors” and “early stage companies.” Further, “An independent team has conducted an internal review of the investment and the findings were directly presented to the Board Risk & Sustainability Committee and to our Board. Although there was no misconduct by the investment team in reaching their investment recommendation, the investment team and senior management, who are ultimately responsible for investment decisions made, took collective accountability and had their compensation reduced.” The letter concluded with this statement....

....MORE

So no clawbacks, or at least none mentioned. 

Here's Temasek's November 2022 statement on the investment.

The team that made the investment should at least be made subject to some sort of high-water-mark tacked on to their compensation hurdle rates. 

Last I saw the Fund's various portfolios were valued at something like S$400 billion (US$295 billionn)

Temasek has a history of going into early and/or riskier rounds than other SWF's though that may be getting curtailed for a while. Singapore's Business Times:

Temasek caps exposure to early-stage companies at 6%

So S$24 billion or so. 

 

If interested we have dozens and dozens of posts on Temasek including this from 2020:
French Startup ManoMano Raises €125 in Series E Round
Temasek is always woth paying attention to.$230+ billion portfolio, not flashy/splashy, they just make money.  

As Crypto Reinvents Finance It Has Also Reinvented Bank Runs

From The Wall Street Journal, November 9:

 FTX’s crisis is a reminder of what is right about traditional finance

Cryptocurrency is an industry often powered by extraordinary belief, yet losses of faith are increasingly common.

The latest example is also one of the biggest: The sudden liquidity crunch for FTX and its subsequent takeover agreement with rival Binance. The exact sequence of events that led up to the agreement isn’t totally clear. They seemed to accelerate when Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, tweeted that Binance was going to sell FTX’s own cryptocurrency called FTT. That appears to have prompted a series of events that culminated in what The Wall Street Journal described as a “run” on FTX by users and a deal with Binance.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, in a tweet about the deal being struck, wrote that the combined teams were “working on clearing out the withdrawal backlog as is. This will clear out liquidity crunches; all assets will be covered 1:1. This is one of the main reasons we’ve asked Binance to come in.”

Runs are a major part of financial history. Until crypto’s emergence, though, they have rarely been part of the financial present. That isn’t because there is universal trust in the traditional finance realm but because there are many mechanisms and guardrails in place to deal with them.

The first line of defense is trying to prevent runs from even starting by offering insurance. For U.S. bank deposits under a certain size, this is provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. U.S. brokerage accounts have a form of insurance from the Securities Investor Protection Corp.

If that doesn’t stop a run from starting, banks and brokerages are required to keep sufficient resources to cover these withdrawals in extreme scenarios. Banks have things such as liquidity coverage ratio requirements and brokerages have net capital requirements. These safeguards aren’t perfect, but depositors and investors seem to generally trust them.

Keep in mind, banks and brokerages do different things with your money. Though checking accounts might seem like lockboxes because of the FDIC—and because sometimes they come with access to literal metal boxes in brick buildings—deposits are in a sense a kind of loan to the bank. There are myriad regulations, like the Volcker rule preventing proprietary trading, or risk-based capital requirements, designed to ensure that deposit-taking banks don’t take undue risk. Fundamentally, though, banks are free to use that money and might do dumb things with it.

Brokerages are different. They sell investments and services and earn fees, but customers’ money typically remains their own. Under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Customer Protection Rule, customer assets are supposed to be segregated from the broker’s proprietary assets.... 

....MUCH MORE

Also from the Dow Jones empire, MarketWatch via MSN:

FTX problems mean big headaches for its private equity investors

...The private investors in FTX include BlackRock Inc. Sequoia, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Softbank Group Corp. Tiger Global Management, Ribbit Capital, Temasek and Lightspeed Venture Partners. A spokesperson from BlackRock did not comment....

Don't cry for the PE peeps, all of the names can handle the hits.

"Fake meat sales are now plunging because of high prices and being too 'woke' for consumers ⁠— here's the 1 timeless takeaway for investors"

From Yahoo Finance:

Just a few years ago, the rise of plant-based meat seemed inevitable. Major grocery stores and fast food joints started adding these faux meat alternatives to their product mix as consumer demand skyrocketed.

Now the boom has ended. The novelty has faded while the fake meat has taken center stage in the ongoing backlash against corporate “wokeness.”

The sudden reversal of this trend highlights several economic factors that impact consumers and investors alike. Here’s a closer look.

The 'wokeness' backlash

While the term “woke” first popped up in the Black American community, it had grown into a global phenomenon as a catch-all term for everything relating to awareness of racial and social justice matters.

Part of the reason the term is so widely used and loosely defined is that corporate entities have embraced it so thoroughly. Organizations like Whole Foods, Pinterest and Adidas adopted the trend to restructure everything from human resources to marketing campaigns — a phenomenon the Harvard Business Review has dubbed “woke washing.”

Plant-based meat companies are closely associated with this phenomenon. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods mention “climate change” and “animal welfare” several times on their website and in corporate reports.

The marketing strategy worked initially, driving double-digit annual sales for both companies and major brand partnerships. However, the growing cynicism about woke capitalism has upended this strategy. Recent data from Information Resources Inc., or IRI, suggests that fake meat sales are declining in 2022, while analysis from Deloitte Consulting LLP. indicates that the market may already be saturated in the U.S....

....MUCH MORE

The term woke morphed from the "aware" meaning it had in black communities to loudly trumpeting one's wokeness, along the way giving rise to our epigrammatic description:

"The less virtue, the more signaling."

I blame suburban white women.

We've chronicled our adventures in Beyond Meat since the IPO and in particular for the last year, many of the links are gathered in September 20's "Following On The News That Beyond Meat's COO Is Not Just A Carnivore But A Cannibal.... (BYND)":

This has been a fun one: 

BigCharts

Here's the latest on their largest competitor, privately held Impossible Foods, via the San Francisco Chronicle

Impossible Foods to eliminate 6% of staff in second round of layoffs this year

Impossible raised $2+ billion (I think they are up to the "H" or "I" round) from some big-time venture types. Temasek, Bill Gates, Li Ka-shing, Khosla, Google Ventures etc. but in their press releases they highlighted:

Impossible Foods’ existing individual investors include Jay Brown, Common, Kirk Cousins, Paul George, Peter Jackson, Jay-Z, Mindy Kaling, Trevor Noah, Alexis Ohanian, Kal Penn, Katy Perry, Questlove, Ruby Rose, Phil Rosenthal, Jaden Smith, Serena Williams, will.i.am and Zedd.

I am unfamiliar with Zedd's investing track record but with a name like "Z" as in zero you'd have to think his IRR isn't that impressive. Stick to music bub.

Electricity: Storage at (possibly) One-Tenth The Cost Of Lithium-Ion Nabs $450 Million Series E

As always the devil is in the scaling but in this case they are starting from good basic technology.

From Pension Pulse, October 5:

Ryan Kennedy of PV Magazine reports iron-air battery startup nets $450 million investment:

Solar and wind power have intermittency in their productive hours, as multi-day weather events can affect output. Therefore, cost-effective, multi-day storage is an important feature in grid reliability.

Boston-based startup Form Energy has developed multi-day iron-air batteries to address this need. The company said its batteries can store renewables-sourced electricity for 100 hours at system costs that are competitive with conventional power plants. At full-scale production, Form Energy said the modules would deliver electricity at about one-tenth the cost of lithium-ion batteries.

The iron-air battery is composed of cells filled with thousands of iron pellets that are exposed to air and create rust. The oxygen is then removed, reverting the rust to iron. Controlling this process allows the battery to be charged and discharged.

The technology has garnered significant interest from investors. Most recently, it raised $450 million in a Series E funding round led by TPG Rise Climate. Also joining the Series E round are GIC and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), along with existing investors ArcelorMittal, Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), Capricorn Investment Group, Coatue, Energy Impact Partners (EIP), MIT’s The Engine, NGP ETP, Temasek, Prelude Ventures, and VamosVentures.

“The development of reliable, long duration energy storage technology is critical for the global transition to renewable energy,” said Leon Pedersen, managing director of CPP Investments. “By introducing new storage solutions to the market, Form Energy can contribute to the energy transition process while also providing attractive risk-adjusted returns for the CPP Fund.”

The technology is less energy-dense than its lithium-ion counterparts, making it a better fit for large grid-scale applications. This may come as an advantage for the company, as EV batteries are in competition for lithium, a metal with geo-political mining concerns and battery fire risks.

The battery modules are grouped together in environmentally protected enclosures. Hundreds of these enclosures are grouped together in modular megawatt-scale power blocks. Depending on the system size, tens to hundreds of these power blocks can be connected to the electricity grid. For scale, in its least dense configuration, a one megawatt system comprises half an acre of land. Higher density configurations would achieve >3 mw/acre.

The company’s first project is a 1 MW/150 MWh pilot installation with Minnesota-based utility Great River Energy. Form Energy said it expects to have the facility deployed at a Great River Energy power plant by 2023.

“Form was founded with a unified mission to develop a multi-day energy storage battery that would unlock the power of extremely low-cost renewable energy to transform the electric grid,” said Form Energy CEO Mateo Jaramillo. “Over the last five years, through rigorous R&D and product engineering, our 100-hour iron-air battery product is ready to scale. The Series E funding will accelerate our ability to responsibly build a globally competitive US battery manufacturing supply chain and advance American innovation.”

Form Energy said it is currently engaged in a site selection process for its first full scale battery manufacturing facility. Starting with identifying over 100 initial sites across 16 states, the company said it has narrowed the site selection to three states, and expects to make an announcement before the end of the year.

The funding round builds on last year’s $200 million in Series D funding. This round was led by $25 million from ArcelorMittal’s XCarb innovation fund. ArcelorMittal will non-exclusively supply the iron materials for the battery system production, and Form Energy said it intends to source its iron domestically, manufacturing the batteries near where the iron was sourced....

....MUCH MORE, Mr. Kolivakis, the proprietor of Pension Pulse, goes deep on this one.

"...As agrochemical prices skyrocket, so do investments in biological alternatives"

From AgFunderNews, February 16:

Data Snapshot is a regular AFN feature in which we analyze agrifoodtech market investment data provided by our parent company, AgFunder.

Click here for more research from AgFunder and sign up to our newsletters to receive alerts about new research reports.

---

Startups developing biological inputs for crops raised just over $892 million worldwide last year, according to preliminary data from AgFunder.

That’s well over double their total funding haul for the previous year – indicating just how much interest in the space has grown.

Please note that this is an upward revision of AgFunder figures first quoted by Reuters earlier this month. Our data are adjusted using a model of how they will appear 12 months into the future based on historical trends, to take predicted reporting lags into account. As such, they may differ from earlier published versions of the same data.

Below, we list the top 15 biologicals funding deals from 2021, by US dollar amount raised.

We have included all private ventures working on a variety of biological crop inputs, including:

• • Biofertilizers
  • Biopesticides
  • Biofungicides
  • Biostimulants
  • Other biological controls

Top 15 biological inputs deals, FY2021

Company	Country	Amount raised	Stage	Deal date
Pivot Bio	US	$430 million	D	Jul
AgBiome	US	$116 million	D	Sept
Anuvia Plant Nutrients	US	$103 million	C	Feb
Invaio Sciences	US	$88.9 million	C	May
Invaio Sciences	US	$50 million	Debt	Oct
Vestaron Corporation	US	$18.3 million	B	Feb
BioPhero	Denmark	$16.8 million	A	Mar
Gaiago	France	$15.4 million	A	Jul
Groundwork BioAg	Israel	$11 million	A	May
Micropep Technologies	France	$10.1 million	A	Aug
Kula Bio	US	$10 million	Seed	May
Provivi	US	$10 million	C	Feb
AgroSustain	Switzerland	$5.19 million	A	Jul
Lucent BioSciences	Canada	$4.2 million	Seed	Nov
BigSIS	UK	$2.05 million	Seed	Oct

By geography, of the top 15 deals:

• • • Eight (53%) involved companies headquartered in the US.
    • France is second-placed with two deals (13%).
    • Canada, Denmark, Israel, Switzerland, and the UK played host to one deal each.

By far the biggest deal in the biologicals space last year — and among the top 20 in agrifoodtech overall — was Pivot Bio‘s $430 million Series D round in July, which was co-led by DCVC and Temasek.

Pivot Bio is one of several startups offering an alternative to conventional nitrogen-based fertilizers by ‘programming’ microbes in the soil so that they produce more of the element in situ....

....MUCH MORE

Indoor and Vertical Farming Now Rebranded As Novel Farming Systems (who's who and what's what in the investment end of the biz)

From AgFunderNews, November 10, a financing newswrap:

Data Snapshot: Bowery’s $300m round tops H1 2021 Novel Farming Systems deals

Data Snapshot is a regular AFN feature in which we analyze agrifoodtech market investment data provided by our parent company, AgFunder.

---

AgFunder data confirms that US vertical farming startup Bowery bagged the biggest investment deal in the Novel Farming Systems category in the first half of this year. The New York-based company claimed that its $300 million Series C raise in May – was “the largest private fundraise to date for an indoor farming company.”

Fidelity led the round with participation from Amplo, Gaingels, General Catalyst, GGV Capital, Temasek, Groupe Artémis, and Google affiliate GV.

In second place was New York’s Edenworks — now known as Upward Farms —  which raised $122 million earlier in the year according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing. It builds aquaponic farms which raise crops and fish together.

The third-largest deal involved German vertical ag company Infarm, which netted $100 million in an extension to its Series C round from investors including Hanaco and Atomico.

Top 10 Novel Farming Systems funding deals H1 2021

Also of note among the top 10 Novel Farming Systems deals in H1 was the $50 million Series A round raised by New York’s Oishii, which claims to cultivate strawberries in the city using bees and ancient Japanese farming practices; while the Channel Islands’ Northern Leaf scored $19 million from five investors to build a growing facility and extraction plant for medical cannabis.

What are Novel Farming Systems?
Novel Farming Systems is a category created by the AgFunder Research team to cover ventures in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) — including vertical farms and greenhouses — as well as tech-enabled insect, seafood, cannabis, and algae production.

Why are investors interested in Novel Farming Systems?....

....MUCH MORE

 Algae, that brings you back doesn't it?

There was 2009's The Summer Of Algae

From 2010's The Navy Calls for More Algae Fuel
To 2012's Algaen Gothic:

"Yup, I used to raise corn for ethanol. But then the topsoil blew away and I couldn't even get enough juice to run my tractor or get drunk on Saturday. Then this stranger came to town. Ordered something called a 'la-tay' and called himself a 'vee-cee.' Said he'd give me $20 million to come to Californee and herd algae. So we packed up our furniture in his little toy car and came west. Now I've got a regular bonanza of the slimy critters and the kids got shoes. Hain't looked over my shoulder back east since."

Betting on Quantum Computing

Not a lot of pure plays, and I can't think of any that are publicly traded.

From PitchBook:

Investors bet on the technologically unproven field of quantum computing

Scientists and engineers are still toiling in labs in a race to develop quantum computers that would significantly outperform traditional computers.

But that isn't holding venture capitalists back. They're pouring record-high funding into work on computing power that is still considered years away from being ready.

Investors have invested $1.02 billion into quantum computing companies so far this year. That's more than was funneled into the industry during the previous three years combined, according to PitchBook data.

*****

Notable recent quantum computing deals

Deal Date

Deal Size (millions)

Post-money Valuation (millions)

Select Investors

Company HQ
PsiQuantum	7/27/2021	$450.0	$3,150.0	Baillie Gifford, BlackRock, M12, Temasek	Palo Alto
Xanadu	5/25/2021	$100.0	N/A	Bessemer Venture Partners, Georgian, Tiger Global	Toronto
Rigetti	8/4/2020	$79.0	N/A	Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, DCVC	Berkeley, Calif.
IonQ	6/16/2020	$62.0	$192.0	Airbus Ventures, Amazon Web Services, Mubadala	College Park, Md.
Quantum Machines	9/6/2021	$50.0	N/A	Battery Ventures, Red Dot Capital Partners, Samsung NEXT Ventures, Valor Equity Partners	Tel Aviv

Data as of Sept. 8, 2021

.....MUCH MORE

We have quite a few posts on quantum computing, for the longest time I didn't believe that D-Wave actually had what they said they had.

Here are a few of our posts that mention Rigetti, one name that may turn into something:

• The Market for Quantum Technology: Early Revenue-Generating Applications
• "Quantum gold rush: the private funding pouring into quantum start-ups"

That second link has quite a few prior posts with the headline story from the journal Nature, who had a couple other articles that may be of interest:

Also at Nature, Oct. 2:
Beyond quantum supremacy: the hunt for useful quantum computers

Way back in 2017 Nature was posting (and we were linking): "Google's Quantum AI Laboratory set out investment opportunities on the road to the ultimate quantum machines" (GOOG).

For more names we have on offer 2018's
"10 Quantum Computing Startups Getting Funded in 2018"
Keeping in mind that Google is pretty fired up on D-Wave's architecture while Rigetti and Alibaba are developing proprietary systems.

And MIT's Technology Review:
You Think the Have/Have-not Divide Is Big Now? Just Wait Until AI has a Quantum Computer Brain

So, if interested those are a starting point. Otherwise, you know the drill, use the 'search blog' box upper left.