Venture Capital

The impact of automation on jobs and society is an increasingly hot topic, with debates going on about how and when human workers will be displaced by robots and A.I. systems.

Bill Gates said in a recent interview with Quartz that governments should tax companies’ use of automation technologies, to mitigate the impact of job losses. “Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things,” Gates said. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”

Kickstart Accelerator, a swiss multi-corporate accelerator in Europe, has announced the opening of applications for its second programme, predominantly based out of ewz-Unterwerk Selnau, the old transformer station in centre of Zurich.

The accelerator, an initiative of digitalswitzerland, is inviting startups from around the world and will shortlist 30 companies, all of whom will participate in an eleven-week programme. The programme will start on 4 September, with an official opening ceremony due to take place on 7 September. The final demo day is set as 17 November, where each team will present their products to a group of potential investors. Kickstart will not be taking any equity from the participating startups. Instead, founders will have the chance to win up to 25`000 CHF, as well as receiving a monthly founder stipend and masterclass sessions with mentors from the corporate partners and the Swiss innovation ecosystem.

Kickstart Accelerator is looking for startups in the food, fintech, smart cities, and robotics and intelligent systems sectors, and is partnering with BaseLaunch to facilitate healthtech companies.

An idea that started in his parents basement, nineteen year old Kai Kloepfer from Boulder, Colorado created a gun that works like a smartphone.

If the gun is picked up by an authorized user, a sensor recognizes the fingerprint and it will fire. “I think this could be huge, I think this could be the future of firearms,” Kloepfer said.

This fingerprint sensor utilizes technologies from biometric security measures, which might be the solution to solving the United States’ gun violence problem (and not only in US).

Switzerland-based fintech company Advanon announced that it has closed the second round of funding and has raised 13.5 million swiss francs, as Finextra reported.

The funding round saw investors including one of the biggest telecom company from Switzerland, Swisscom, two venture funds b-to-v Partners and VI Partners as well as the founder of Partners Group, Urs Wietlisbach. There are three-quarters available to invest on the platform and one-quarter will be invested in equity. The online platform helps SMEs to bridge the long payment terms that they’re facing nowadays.

The Hungarian financier George Soros would be interested in joining MPS, as reported by the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. Besides Soros, also Qatar and US funds would be ready for subscrition of the capital, which in any case should be less than 5 billion initially indicated. The plan and the bank accounts will be approved today by the board and disclosed to the financial community tomorrow.

The scheme, imagined by the MPS financial advisers would be to focus on the anchor investor that could cover the supply in the market with high amounts: some Qatari funds would be interested in investing €1.5 billion to €2.0 billion, while, the newspaper wrote just yesterday, another billion could come from two US large institutional investors: they would be, according to rumors in financial circles, George Soros and one of the kings of the US hedge fund, John Paulson.

The total value of Venture Capital (VC) investment into blockchain technologies and Bitcoin companies totalled $290 million in the first half 2016, with more than 30 startups receiving funding in that time, according to a new study from Juniper Research.

More than a third of all investment was accounted for by three companies: Circle with its US$60 million Series D round; Blockstream, a US$55 million Series A; and Digital Asset Holdings, a US$60 million funding round.

BSI, the oldest bank in the canton of Ticino, is under fire for involvement in the scandal of the Malaysian fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd. The private bank in Lugano risks heavy penalties. First, the central bank of Singapore has ordered BSI to stop all the activities of the local subsidiary BSI Bank Ltd. The fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd, established in 2009 by Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, is accused of having embezzled more than 650 million dollars of capital of public companies to divert them to offshore accounts payable at the same premier.