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SBI Holdings plans to raise up to 920 million USD for a venture capital fund

SBI HoldingsJapan’s financial conglomerate SBI Holdings announced earlier today that it plans to raise up to 100 billion JPY (920 million USD) for a new venture capital fund, which is expected to become the largest active investment facility in the island with a focus on startups.

SBI Holdings has emerged as a powerful force in the Japanese venture capital industry, setting up funds in 2015 and 2018 focused primarily on fintech startups. Named “Fund 4+5” after the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, Industry 4.0 and Japan’s plan for a super-intelligent Society 5.0, the new mechanism will invest both in the country and abroad in a wide range of sectors, including 5G networks, the Internet of Things, robotics and healthcare, said the CEO of SBI Holdings, Yoshitaka Kitao.

The move is a signal of Kitao’s confidence in emerging technologies, despite growing concerns about swollen technological appraisals and business models burning huge sums of money.

SBI Holdings aims to complete its first fundraiser by March and then start investing before a few more months of fundraising take place to reach its 100 billion JPY target.

Yoshitaka Kitao, a former CEO of Japan’s SoftBank, has pledged to shake up Japan’s banking industry by creating a network of regional banks and modernizing them with cutting-edge technology. On Friday, the company announced a 20 million USD investment in OpenLegacy, an Israel-based developer of application programming integration software.

Yoshitaka Kitao said he expects the strong performance of existing funds to attract more investors. Twenty companies in the group’s portfolio went public in the fiscal year ended March 2019, with another 28 expected to do so by March this year.

About Stefani Igaz

Stefani Igaz is finance analyst and author in Economo finance, working as correspondent for European economy and policy news.

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