According to Russian business newspaper Vedomosti (via Quintura), star investor Digital Sky Technologies has set up a new fund dubbed DST Global – 2. The fund has already made investments in Groupon (January 2011) and is close to investing $50 million in exchange for 5 percent of online music startup Spotify as part of a $100 million round, according to the paper.
You may remember we broke the news that DST was indeed about to lead a huge financing round for Spotify back in February. In other news, DST has also joined a group of investors who’ve put hundreds of millions of dollars into 360buy.com, a Chinese online retailing powerhouse often dubbed China’s Amazon. → Read More
Editor’s note: Guest author Chris Yeh is an independent angel investor and VP of Marketing for PBworks, one of his investments. He has been involved with Internet startups since 1995. His Twitter handle is @chrisyeh.
The big news this morning is Yuri Milner’s announcement that he and Ron Conway will be investing $150,000 in *every* Y Combinator startup on a no-discount, no-cap convertible loan. → Read More
Last night at the Crunchies, Yuri Milner of Digital Sky Technologies won the VC of the Year award (Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures was a close runner-up). Milner has almost single-handedly created a new class of mezzanine venture capital, allowing companies like Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga to postpone IPOs while still getting a ton of liquidity and huge valuations.
Before he could leave the stage after accepting his award last night, Michael tried to ambush interview him. Milner deadpanned his way through the every question, and the result was pretty entertaining (see video). Arrington asked why his investment philosophy is working out so well, noting that Milner invests at what many people at the time think are absurd valuations.
“Because of absurd valuations,” replied Milner. → Read More
While everyone has been busy wondering when Facebook was going to IPO, most were looking past the first question: how is Facebook going to IPO? But not TechCrunch alum Evelyn Rusli and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tonight the pair are reporting that Goldman Sachs has just led a major new investment in the social network. An investment that values it at a nice round $50 billion. And the likely reason is so Goldman can take Facebook public.
More specifically, Goldman has invested $450 million in Facebook while Russian firm (and current large stakeholder) Digital Sky Technologies threw in another $50 million for a total of $500 million in this round. But the round is more complicated than that as apparently Goldman will be able to unload some of its stake to DST, according to the report. → Read More
As we first reported last night, Groupon has already closed $500 million of a whopping $950 million funding round. Now the SEC filing is out showing that the first sale occurred on December 17, and that there is still $450 million worth of securities available to be sold in the current round. The new round gives Groupon a valuation of $4.75 billion.
We noted that most of the proceeds of the round is going back to founders and existing shareholders, with DST leading the round (Fidelity and Morgan Stanley also participated). Now we know exactly how much. The filing specifies that $345 million of the proceeds (from the $500 million raised) will go directly to “executive officers, directors or promoters.” → Read More
Le Web 10 host Loic Le Meur just finished his on-stage interview with Alexander Tamas, Partner at one of the most watched technology investment firms on the planet, DST / Mail.ru Group.
That’s quite a presence you have: Groupon, Zynga, Facebook and … Twitter?
Not Twitter (smiles). → Read More
Mail.ru Group, formerly known as Digital Sky Technologies and notable investor in Internet sensations Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, among others, has filed for a $876 million IPO on the London Stock Exchange that would value the investment firm at up to $5.7 billion.
That valuation is higher than expected (earlier reports predicted a $5 billion valuation). → Read More
Internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies (DST) today formally announced the acquisition of Russian social network Odnoklassniki.ru, which we reported on last week.
DST has bought out out the minority shareholders in Forticom Group Limited – which it now fully owns – and Odnoklassniki, and interestingly transferred its interest in the Polish social network Nasza-Klasa.pl to the previous minority shareholders of Forticom as part of the deal. → Read More
Quick quiz: Who are the three largest Internet companies in the world by market capitalization?
If you guessed Google and Amazon you got two right, but I’m betting few of our American readers guessed the third. I certainly wouldn’t have a year ago. It’s not eBay or Yahoo; it’s Tencent. If you are in the Web space and haven’t heard of them, read this post, because Tencent’s cutesy penguin mascot is only going to cast a larger shadow in the global Web world in coming years. → Read More
Global investment group Digital Sky Technologies (aka DST), who has famously invested in major Internet companies such as Facebook, Zynga and Groupon, has made another key hire.
The latest finance whiz to join the Russian investment firm as partner is John Lindfors, who will start there next September. → Read More
Today is a big day in Asia’s Internet industry. Earlier today, Korea’s NHN said it will buy major Japanese portal Livedoor, and now Tencent, China’s largest Internet company, has announced [PDF] it plans to invest $300 million in cash into Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies (DST).
DST itself has been in the news repeatedly over the last few months, especially after investing $200 million in Facebook and $180 million in Zynga last year. On its homepage, the firm claims its portfolio companies command 70% of all page views on the Russian speaking web.
Tencent racked up $1.8 billion in revenues last year [PDF], with operating profit reaching a staggering $882 million. The Shenzhen-based company’s key service is instant messaging platform QQ, which boasted no less than 523 million active users at the end of last year. Tencent also operates a web portal (QQ.com), a social network (Qzone) with nearly 400 million active users (self-reported), a gaming portal (QQ Games), a search engine (SOSO), and a number of other services.
Tencent will get a 10.26% stake in DST, 0.51% of total voting power and the right to nominate “one observer” to DST’s board of directors. Both companies also said they’ll be entering a strategic partnership, without providing details. → Read More
Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian investment group founded by Yuri Milner and Gregory Finger, has increased its stake in social networking leader Facebook to more than 5% of the American company, Russia’s leading business newspaper Kommersant reports.
Furthermore, DST is looking to increase its stake in Facebook even more, according to Yakov Sadchikov from Quintura, who picked up on the news this morning. → Read More
Zynga, one of the stars of the Scamville drama, has raised a big round of funding – $180 million. Digital Sky Technologies, Tiger Global, Institutional Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz all participated in the round. The company has now raised $219 million in total.
DST, which has invested $300 million in Facebook this year, led the round. As with Facebook, some of DST’s investment will be used to buy shares directly from employees.
The NYTimes notes that one of DST’s major shareholders, Alisher Usmanov, spent six years in an Uzbek jail for fraud and embezzlement in the 1980s. Usmanov says he was jailed for political reasons, and Zynga investor Kleiner Perkins says there’s no problem with DST.
That won’t stop people making cracks about the Russian Mafia investing in Mafia Wars, one of Zynga’s popular social games, though.
Zynga is clearly on a roll, and some people have speculated that their revenue may be greater than Facebook’s. One thing is clear, Facebook and Zynga are very, very close. Zynga is Facebook’s largest advertiser, say multiple sources. And they now share DST as a major shareholder. And Marc Andreesen, now a Zynga investor, sits on Facebook’s board of directors. → Read More
Digital Sky Technologies (aka DST), the Russian Internet holding company that holds stakes in several major Russian-language social networking and communication players and notably also recently invested in Facebook, is melting two of its largest portfolio companies together into one online powerhouse.
Astrum Online Entertainment, itself formed by DST after merging five online game companies that were active mainly in Russia and Eastern Europe (Astrum Nival, Nikita.Online, IT Territory, TimeZero and DJ Games) back in 2007, will effectively become 100% owned by Mail.ru, the leading Internet portal in the Russian speaking world and equally majority-owned by DST. → Read More
Russian social network Vkontakte.ru, notoriously heavily ‘inspired’ by Facebook‘s design, business model and features, is plotting an international roll-out according to daily business newspaper Vedomosti (Google translation).
The report mentions that the company has recently acquired the domain name vk.com for an undisclosed amount and plans to use it to brand and market Vkontakte.ru in 12 unnamed languages, starting October this year.
Notably, Vkontakte.ru is backed by Digital Sky Technologies (DST), the same investor who recently took a 1.96 percent stake in Facebook for $200 million – giving the company a $10 billion valuation – and soon after offered to purchase up to $100 million of common stock from current and former Facebook employees. Now the other high-profile portfolio company of the Moscow-based investment firm, Vkontakte.ru, is going head to head with the Palo Alto-based social networking giant in multiple languages. → Read More
Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies has placed a tender offer to purchase up to $100 million of common stock from current and former Facebook employees, we’ve confirmed from a source close to the deal. Employees who would like to accept the offer must accept the terms within 20 business days from today. The offer is for $14.77 per share, valuing the company at $6.5 billion.
Facebook has confirmed the transaction, and sent the following statement from CEO Mark Zuckerberg: “While individuals must make their own decisions about participating in this program, I’m pleased that the price DST is offering is much greater than the price originally considered last fall. This is recognition of Facebook’s growth and progress towards making the world more open and connected.”
This comes just a little over a month after DST invested $200 million in Facebook, purchasing preferred stock that valued the company at $10 billion. → Read More
When the WSJ broke the story about Russian tech investment group Digital Sky Technologies looking to buy a stake in Facebook for $200 million – a deal that would value the private company at $10 billion in preferred stock – there was still some uncertainty about whether the firm was gunning for a seat on Facebook’s board of directors as part of the investment offer, of if they’d be happy with just purchasing equity.
This is important, because we know Facebook recently received a term sheet for a similar venture round of funding at a lower valuation ($8 billion) which was turned down because it was based on the requirement of a board seat. → Read More
