Silicon Valley is no longer the mecca for venture capital funding it once was; Chinese VC firms are stepping up and signalling they could surpass their American counterparts.
An analysis by the Wall Street Journal found that the funding available from VC companies based in China has increased by 15 times since 2013, while U.S. funds only doubled. Of the $154 billion which was funneled into startups globally, 40 percent came from Asian investors, compared to 44 percent from the U.S.
Furthermore, last year, in deals worth more than $100 million, Chinese investors were more active than Americans, with funding from Japanese giant SoftBank on their heels.
Kai-Fu Lee, a former Microsoft and Google executive based in China who founded his own VC firm in 2009, predicts rivals to Google and Facebook led by Chinese companies to emerge in non-English-speaking markets within five to 10 years.
“All the rest of the world will basically be a land grab between the U.S. and China,” he told the Journal.
Last year, real estate technology globally saw VC investment triple to $12.6 billion, compared to $4.2 billion in 2016. A large slice of the 2017 pie came from SoftBank’s investments in Compass and WeWork, as The Real Deal reported. [WSJ] — Erin Hudson