April 24, 2019 Cathay Innovation today announces that Getaround, the US carsharing pioneer, has acquired for $300m its portfolio company Drivy, the largest and fastest-growing carsharing platform in Europe, in order to form the world leading carsharing marketplace, with more than 5 million users spanning over 300 cities in the U.S. and Europe. While Cathay […]
Car-Sharing Startup Getaround Drives Into Europe
A U.S. car-sharing powerhouse is expanding abroad. San Francisco-based Getaround Inc., backed by investors including SoftBank Group Corp., said it has acquired Paris-based Drivy SAS for $300 million, expanding the reach of a startup that has been pushing a vision of reducing car ownership in urban areas. […]
CES 2019: The shift towards an AI driven services economy has begu
Cathay Innovation attended CES in Las Vegas this year – we visited the exhibitions and held meetings with our ecosystem of corporates to discuss the evolution of various technologies. As usual, the event continued to be massive, with more than 4,500 exhibiting companies and 180,000 attendees. […]
Venture capital funds are starting to make bigger bets on African startups
Funding has long been a challenge for African startups but the tide has started to turn in the last year as the sector heats up and both investors and entrepreneurs start to see some of their long term efforts come to fruition. In the recent past the biggest issue startups from Lagos to Nairobi or […]
Getaround acquires European car rental platform Drivy for $300M
Getaround, the peer-to-peer car-sharing startup that launched at TC Disrupt back in 2011, is making moves to become a global car rental service. […]
AfricInvest and Cathay Innovation Join Forces to Launch the Leading Pan-African Venture Fund
April 10, 2019 AfricInvest, a leading private equity firm in Africa with $1.5bn in assets under management, and Cathay Innovation, the global venture capital fund, created in affiliation with Cathay Capital Private Equity, are pleased to announce today their association for the fundraising and management of the “Cathay Africinvest Innovation” Fund, the first Pan-African Venture […]
Cathay Innovation and AfricInvest to raise $168M Africa VC fund
Tunisia-based private equity firm Africinvest has teamed up with Cathay Innovation — the venture sub of Paris-based private equity firm Cathay Capital — to launch a new Africa tech fund with a target raise of $168 million. Details are still forthcoming, but the Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund will focus primarily on Series A to C-stage investments in African technology […]
Connecting African Entrepreneurs to the world with the first Pan-African Venture Capital Fund
Africinvest and Cathay Innovation proudly announced today the launch of Cathay Africinvest Innovation. This new fund is the largest venture capital fund in Africa with nine offices interconnecting the entire African continent. Our aim is simple: contribute to changing the financing and development of startups in this continent of 1.3 Billion of people. How so? By providing the […]
What Type Of Innovator Do You Want To Be?
Today it feels like like every day we learn about an incredible new technology, product or, service that was supposed to be a futuristic concept, but now is, “coming soon.” Nearly 20 years ago, just before the internet bubble in 2000-2001, new online concepts were being introduced at a dizzying pace, and today, during what […]
China and the Bay Area face off over AI
From robot cars to virtual assistants to algorithms for streaming video, advances in artificial intelligence are driving innovation and money. A lot of money. The competition between the world’s two premier hotbeds for artificial intelligence is really a race for who gets to define the future. […]