Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) yesterday launched a NT$10 billion (US$304.32 million) fund to invest in Taiwanese start-ups, with the objective of supporting companies that plan to utilize the resources offered by Alibaba’s ecosystem.
The Taiwan Entrepreneurs Fund (台灣創業者基金) is to be under the control of executive director Andrew Lee (李治平), who was formerly the chief financial officer at Entie Commercial Bank Ltd (安泰銀行), Alibaba said.
The fund’s board of directors has picked the China Development Industrial Bank (中國開發工業銀行) as its investment manager to evaluate the business potentials and feasibility of the proposals put forward by local start-ups, Alibaba executive vice chairman Joseph Tsai (蔡崇信) said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Tsai said chairman Jack Ma (馬雲) has been discussing how to assist Taiwan’s young entrepreneurs since Ma visited Taiwan in the beginning of this year.
“Alibaba’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. We hope this initiative can solve Taiwanese start-ups’ common funding problems,” Tsai told a press conference in Taipei.
“The fund is not a charity. We want to invest in the most promising start-ups that put forward the best ideas,” Tsai said.
Tsai said Alibaba or the fund would not control the selected start-ups or intervene in their operations.
“However, we require start-ups to share profits with the fund or return the investment to it once they become profitable, so the fund can sustain itself and continue to help other start-ups,” Tsai said.
Lee said the start-ups that wish to apply for funding must be run by Taiwanese. Moreover, their products or services have to take part in Alibaba’s ecosystem of e-commerce, logistics, mobile platforms, cloud computing or financial services.
“The project offers the firms Alibaba’s resources. We hope the start-ups take part in Alibaba’s ecosystem,” Lee said.
China Development Industrial Bank president Paul Yang (楊文鈞) said that as an investment manager, the bank would initially prefer to receive proposals that focus on industries in e-commerce or the Internet.
“We would prefer to see innovative ideas that could fully utilize Alibaba’s business ecosystem,” Yang said.
The proposals would need to demonstrate that the start-ups are outstanding companies in Taiwan with highly differentiated products in the market, he said.
Earlier yesterday, Alibaba also set up a HK$1 billion (US$129 million) fund to invest in start-ups in Hong Kong.
China’s largest e-commerce operator selected Gobi Partners Inc as the manager of the non-profit fund in the territory, which is to support online and brick-and-mortar companies, and provide six to 12-month Alibaba internships to about 200 students each year, the company said in a statement.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”