Latest news with #MichaelMoritz
South Wales Argus
28-07-2025
- Business
- South Wales Argus
Professional Triathlon Organisation announces Series C funding boost
The successful completion of a Series C funding round, led by SURJ Sports Investment and supported by Cordillera, Verance Capital and Sir Michael Moritz, will support the PTO's continued growth in international markets as well as building long-term athlete and fan engagement. PTO CEO Sam Renouf welcomed the news, with the hopes that further funding can also help propel their T100 Triathlon World Tour to greater heights. 'We're delighted to welcome SURJ and Verance Capital to the PTO investor family," he said. "This is a major milestone not only for us as an organisation, but for the broader vision of triathlon's future. "Our goal has always been to reimagine the sport for modern audiences and open up participation to athletes of all levels. "With new partners like SURJ and Verance, we're better equipped than ever to scale our ambitions globally. "The momentum from our record-breaking T100 Singapore event is just the beginning of what we hope to achieve in 2025 and beyond.' The Series C investment comes at a time of growth for the PTO. In 2024, the organisation launched the T100 Tour and the event has rapidly expanded in the past 18 months. With the wellbeing of professional athletes at its heart and widespread fan participation events, the T100 has attracted thousands of eyes to the endurance sport in less than two years and a new round of funding will be viewed as a critical opportunity to only further enhance it's position amongst elite sport. The next T100 Triathlon World Tour race takes place in London on 9-10 August. Visit
Zawya
28-07-2025
- Business
- Zawya
PIF's sports investment firm Surj backs triathlete group PTO's funding
Saudi Arabia's Surj Sports Investment has participated in the Series C funding of Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) PTO founding investor Michael Moritz, Cordillera Investment Partners and Verance Capital also participated in the funding, which raised approximately $40 million, according to Bloomberg. Earlier this month, Sky News reported Surj was in advanced talks to inject $20 million into PTO. Saudi Arabia's $1.15 trillion wealth fund, PIF, set up Surj Sports Investment in 2023 to develop a sports sector via strategic investments. The Saudi investment is expected to fuel the expansion of the athlete-owned entity into the kingdom and the wider region, while also positioning it as a likely future host market for PTO's flagship T100 Triathlon World Tour championship race, according to a statement. (Writing by Bindu Rai, editing by Seban Scaria)
The Guardian
19-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Silicon Valley-backed California city project pitches plan for manufacturing hub
The chief executive of 'California Forever', a Silicon Valley billionaire-backed project to build a new city on tens of thousands of acres of California farmland, has announced plans to develop a manufacturing site within the future town for defense, energy, robotics, aerospace and transportation companies. Speaking at the Reindustrialize summit in Detroit, Jan Sramek called the proposal the 'Solano Foundry'. The 2,100-acre site would be located on the more than 65,000 acres in Solano county that the tech billionaires began purchasing in 2017 but have yet to develop. 'It's time to bring back 'designed in California, made in California',' Sramek wrote in a social media post announcing the plan. 'Silicon Valley earned its name because chips were once made here alongside code. By bringing R&D and manufacturing back together, Solano Foundry restores that magic, in a new home for frontier tech. California is back.' In early 2024 – after the New York Times revealed that tech billionaires such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Michael Moritz were behind California Forever – the group submitted a ballot initiative that would have asked voters to approve their building a new city on the land. Soon after, they withdrew the initiative, deciding to instead seek approval through the county's standard processes for negotiating and executing a development agreement. Then, this March, the group announced that it planned to build a shipbuilding hub on the land it had acquired near the Sacramento River, which feeds into the San Francisco Bay. Soon after, Donald Trump signed an anticipated executive order to revitalize the shipbuilding industry in the US. The 'Solano Foundry' would similarly appeal to Trump's desires to revitalize American industry. Sramek echoed the president's language in his social media post. 'Silicon Valley made its name in hardware,' he wrote. 'But we offshored to China, and broke that model. And now it's Shenzhen and Guangzhou that lead drones and robotics.' Andreas Lieber, the Foundry's general manager, told KQED the plan will rebuild the middle class by bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. 'You cannot really operate as a country if you're only doing service jobs and basically outsource your middle class,' he said. 'And then you're not building anything anymore.' A white paper that California Forever published, in collaboration with real estate company JLL, predicts that the Foundry will 'create at least 35,000 manufacturing jobs and 5,000 warehousing jobs'. It also featured quotes supporting the project from powerful voices in Silicon Valley. 'California Forever's approach for their Solano Foundry is not the California I know, but it's the California I want to know,' said former Intel executive Bob Swan. Solano county residents are more skeptical. 'There are sites that can accommodate industries such as this that do not require… the development of an entire new community to make this happen,' Nate Huntington of Solano Together, a coalition of community members opposed to the project, told KQED. 'Many of the things that they put out [are] to create hype and potential attraction to this project, but some of those things fade.' In his social media post, Sramek toted the community tech billionaires hope to build alongside the Foundry: 'To actually re-industrialize, we need industrial ecosystems, where R&D, production, and training are located within amazing places to live.' Located '40mins from Napa, 2.5 hours from Tahoe,' he added, the city will have capacity for more than 175,000 new homes.
The Guardian
19-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Silicon Valley-backed California city project pitches plan for manufacturing hub
The chief executive of 'California Forever', a Silicon Valley billionaire-backed project to build a new city on tens of thousands of acres of California farmland, has announced plans to develop a manufacturing site within the future town for defense, energy, robotics, aerospace and transportation companies. Speaking at the Reindustrialize summit in Detroit, Jan Sramek called the proposal the 'Solano Foundry'. The 2,100-acre site would be located on the more than 65,000 acres in Solano county that the tech billionaires began purchasing in 2017 but have yet to develop. 'It's time to bring back 'designed in California, made in California',' Sramek wrote in a social media post announcing the plan. 'Silicon Valley earned its name because chips were once made here alongside code. By bringing R&D and manufacturing back together, Solano Foundry restores that magic, in a new home for frontier tech. California is back.' In early 2024 – after the New York Times revealed that tech billionaires such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Michael Moritz were behind California Forever – the group submitted a ballot initiative that would have asked voters to approve their building a new city on the land. Soon after, they withdrew the initiative, deciding to instead seek approval through the county's standard processes for negotiating and executing a development agreement. Then, this March, the group announced that it planned to build a shipbuilding hub on the land it had acquired near the Sacramento River, which feeds into the San Francisco Bay. Soon after, Donald Trump signed an anticipated executive order to revitalize the shipbuilding industry in the US. The 'Solano Foundry' would similarly appeal to Trump's desires to revitalize American industry. Sramek echoed the president's language in his social media post. 'Silicon Valley made its name in hardware,' he wrote. 'But we offshored to China, and broke that model. And now it's Shenzhen and Guangzhou that lead drones and robotics.' Andreas Lieber, the Foundry's general manager, told KQED the plan will rebuild the middle class by bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. 'You cannot really operate as a country if you're only doing service jobs and basically outsource your middle class,' he said. 'And then you're not building anything anymore.' A white paper that California Forever published, in collaboration with real estate company JLL, predicts that the Foundry will 'create at least 35,000 manufacturing jobs and 5,000 warehousing jobs'. It also featured quotes supporting the project from powerful voices in Silicon Valley. 'California Forever's approach for their Solano Foundry is not the California I know, but it's the California I want to know,' said former Intel executive Bob Swan. Solano county residents are more skeptical. 'There are sites that can accommodate industries such as this that do not require… the development of an entire new community to make this happen,' Nate Huntington of Solano Together, a coalition of community members opposed to the project, told KQED. 'Many of the things that they put out [are] to create hype and potential attraction to this project, but some of those things fade.' In his social media post, Sramek toted the community tech billionaires hope to build alongside the Foundry: 'To actually re-industrialize, we need industrial ecosystems, where R&D, production, and training are located within amazing places to live.' Located '40mins from Napa, 2.5 hours from Tahoe,' he added, the city will have capacity for more than 175,000 new homes.
New York Times
30-06-2025
- Business
- New York Times
He Made Billions on Google and PayPal. Now, He's Betting on News.
Many billionaires from Silicon Valley have lately cast a critical eye on the news media. Michael Moritz, the venture capitalist who made billions by placing early bets on companies like Google and PayPal, is taking the opposite approach. Mr. Moritz said in an interview over the weekend that The San Francisco Standard, a local news organization he co-founded, is buying Charter, a digital publication focused on the future of work, to broaden its focus. Kevin Delaney, a founder of Charter, will be the editor in chief of both publications. Mr. Moritz, 70, who has been a resident of San Francisco for four decades, said that he decided to start The Standard because he 'couldn't find out what was happening in San Francisco' anymore because of 'the erosion of all the local news outlets.' 'I think news and information in any city is as vital as water, electricity and gas,' said Mr. Moritz, a former San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine covering Silicon Valley. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The San Francisco Standard may seem an unlikely suitor for Charter, which has a global focus. But Mr. Delaney said in an interview that the two companies would look to collaborate on big stories such as the explosion of artificial intelligence, its impact on jobs in the technology industry and changes in the way cutting-edge companies are managed — stories that are all rooted in San Francisco. 'California is the fourth-largest economy in the world on its own,' Mr. Delaney said. 'Having a deep, ambitious journalistic agenda there and a strong newsroom is really interesting and meaningful.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
