Circle Internet Financial raised US$60 million in a funding round backed by Baidu Inc (百度) as the start-up that allows users to send payments for free also formed a China business to win customers in the world’s second-largest economy.
Sam Palmisano, former chairman of International Business Machines Corp, and IDG Capital Partners supported the Series D financing, Circle said in a statement. Alex Norstrom, an executive at Spotify Ltd, will join the company’s board.
Founded in 2013, Circle uses bitcoin’s blockchain technology so customers can instantly send payments in a message that can be accompanied by emojis or GIFs. Commercial services to Chinese consumers, where it will come up against Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) and Alipay (支付寶), will start once the company gets regulatory approval and finds banking partners.
“In China there are already incredible domestic companies — Tencent and Alipay,” chief executive officer Jeremy Allaire said. “We do not have any belief that we can come in and dethrone those products, but there is an opportunity for Chinese consumers that want to share value globally with friends in other parts of the world.”
Other participants in the funding include Breyer Capital, CICC Alpha, EverBright Investments and Glenn Hutchins, the co-founder of Silver Lake Management, the company said. The company did not disclose a valuation.
Last year, Boston-based Circle raised US$50 million in a funding round coled by Goldman Sachs Group Inc and IDG Capital.
Circle China has been created as an independent company with local investors to capitalize on a population that is comfortable with payments made over social media.
Baidu’s investment is the latest in a series by the search company as it tries to diversify.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by