The National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday that it plans to cooperate with local and foreign venture capital firms to establish five US$100 million funds to finance local startup companies.
The project is included in the council’s “HeadStart Taiwan” project, which aims to create a favorable environment for local startups and is likely to be approved by the Cabinet this week, NDC Minister Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) said on the sidelines of this year’s Taiwan Startup and Venture Capital Policy Forum yesterday.
“We set up five teams for these funds, with each of them to look for its own partners specializing in different industries,” Kuan said.
The National Development Fund (NDF) is to invest 30 to 40 percent of the capital in each fund, Kuan said, adding that the fund plans to allow its venture capital partners to receive more than 60 to 70 percent of the profits that the funds post in the future, Kuan said.
Kuan said the council has talked with many venture capital firms, including 500 Startups, a seed fund and startup accelerator based in Silicon Valley, about joining the project.
Meanwhile, the council also aims to ease regulations for domestic startups to change the par values of their shares, Kuan said.
“Taiwanese companies currently do not need to set the par values of their shares at NT$10 as before, but they are still not allowed to change the values once the figures are determined,” Kuan said.
Kuan said the council still needs to talk to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Financial Supervisory Commission to change the related rules.
Forum attendee Paul Wang (王伯元), chairman of SerComm Corp (中磊), which makes wireless as well as wired network products, said angel funds that invested in Facebook Inc enjoyed a return on investment of 5,000 times when the company went public, because they invested at a very early stage when Facebook set its par value at a low level.
“The high return on investment is the reason the US has so many angel funds to help startups,” Wang said, adding that a fixed par value of stocks reduced possible return for similar funds in Taiwan.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained