Investors in News

China Culture Industrial Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd. is the entrusted manager for China Culture Industrial Investment Fund, which is backed by Ministry of Finance and state-owned enterprises such as Bank of China and China International Television Corporation.

Speedinvest is a European venture capital fund for tech start-ups. The company collaborates with entrepreneurs in achieving their goal of building great companies. It is involved in early stage investments and specializes in operational support. Speedinvest partners with a global network, that includes operations in Silicon Valley, to become a key investment and development hub for Europe’s start-up community.

Halogen Ventures is an LA based fund. Halogen Ventures believes in hands-on attention and plug each of our portfolio companies into a strategic network of advisors, investors, and accelerators in the greater venture community. With a focus on the consumer, Halogen Ventures also adds value in the entertainment, marketing, and PR space to further the footprint of its brands.

Founder Collective is a seed-stage venture capital fund, built by a collection of successful entrepreneurs. The firm is headquartered in New York City and Cambridge, but makes investments all over the world. With $50M under management, the fund is focused on East coast investments. Founder Collective is industry agnostic, but the firm prefers companies that have an information technology component.

Axel Springer is a media company engaged in publishing newspapers, magazines, and digital sales channels. Axel Springer founded the publishing house in Hamburg in 1946; the editors spent the first year working above a warehouse for tea and spices, often without electricity, and using borrowed typewriters. As a result of consistent internationalization and digitization, Axel Springer SE today is not only market leader in the German print business, but is also active in more than 40 countries through subsidiaries, joint ventures and licenses. Now it is a question of pressing ahead with digitization even faster and more vigorously. For Axel Springer SE, informative and entertaining journalism is a viable business model also in future on the Internet, along with marketing and classifieds, the other two business segments in which the company is traditionally strong. In the tradition of its founder, who fostered journalistic and technological innovations in his time, Axel Springer SE is breaking new ground. The company is consistently pursuing the objective of building up a fast-growing and profitable digital portfolio and for this reason is networking today more than ever before with the current generation of founders: digital start-ups. Along with the transformation of their established strong media brands, their own new developments online and strategically-oriented acquisitions of web companies, this network is one of the building blocks of the company's international digitization strategy: Axel Springer SE wants to become the leading digital publisher.

Torch Capital is a brand-focused early-stage consumer fund investing in the next generation of truly great, mission-driven companies across consumer products and services, marketplaces, ecommerce, health & wellness, digital media, and food & beverage.

Founded in 1993, WI Harper Group is an investment firm based in Beijing. The firm invests in start-up companies.

We’re (not just) investors. We’re (more than) advisors. We’re (beyond) connectors. Ben Franklin Technology Partners combines the best practices of early stage investing with a higher purpose – to lead the region’s technology community to new heights, creating jobs and transforming lives. For over 30 years, Ben has been the leading seed stage capital provider for the region’s technology sectors, investing over $170 million in more than 1,750 regional technology companies, many of which have gone on to become industry leaders. Ben Franklin has also launched university/industry partnerships that accelerate scientific discoveries to commercialization, and has seeded regional initiatives that strengthen our entrepreneurial community.

The Hearst Corporation is an American multinational diversified media and information company group that publishes daily and weekly newspapers, and magazines. The company also operates television stations and radio stations, and cable networks; and provides information, insights, analytics, and workflow solutions to finance, healthcare, and transportation markets. Some of its major ownership interests include 15 daily and 36 weekly newspapers and more than 300 magazines worldwide, including Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle, and O, The Oprah Magazine; 30 television stations through Hearst Television, Inc., which reach a combined 19% of U.S. viewers; ownership in leading cable networks, including A+E Networks, and ESPN Inc.; as well as business publishing, digital distribution, television production, newspaper features distribution, and real estate ventures. The Hearst Corporation was founded in 1887 and is based in New York City.

News Corporation, a media and information services company, creates and distributes content for consumers and businesses worldwide. It operates in five segments: News and Information Services, Book Publishing, Digital Real Estate Services, Subscription Video Services, and Other. The company distributes content and data products, including The Wall Street Journal, Factiva, Dow Jones Risk & Compliance, Dow Jones Newswires, Barron’s, MarketWatch, and DJX through various media channels, such as newspapers, newswires, Websites, mobile device applications, tablets and e-book readers, newsletters, magazines, proprietary databases, live journalism, video, and podcasts. It also owns and operates daily, Sunday, weekly, and bi-weekly newspapers comprising The Australian, The Weekend Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, Herald Sun, Sunday Herald Sun, The Courier Mail, The Sunday Mail, The Advertiser, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday, and New York Post, as well as digital mastheads and other Websites. In addition, the company offers home-delivered shopper media that include free-standing inserts and direct mail products; in-store marketing products and services primarily to consumer packaged goods manufacturers; in-store merchandising services; and digital marketing solutions. Further, it publishes general fiction, nonfiction, children’s, and religious books; and provides sports programming content to approximately 200 channels distributed through cable, satellite, and Internet protocol, as well as broadcast rights to live sporting events. Additionally, the company offers property and property-related services on its Websites and mobile applications, as well as residential and commercial property Websites; online real estate services; and professional software and services products, which comprise Top Producer, FiveStreet, and ListHub. News Corporation is headquartered in New York, New York.