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Kylie Jenner’s vodka seltzer deal signals China VC investor’s global push

Published

1 year ago

November 27, 2024

Kylie Jenner’s vodka seltzer deal signals China VC investor’s global push

Sequoia Capital’s former China unit has accelerated its push for global deals, investing in celebrity-backed start-ups such as Kylie Jenner’s Vodka seltzer company, as it struggles to deploy its $9bn cash pile in a sluggish domestic market and tightening US controls.

HongShan, which split off last year from one of the world’s largest venture capital firms amid rising geopolitical tensions, has ratcheted up its hunt for deals in Europe and North Asia after facing shrinking options in China.

The Chinese investment group has done deals with celebrity-backed consumer groups such as Jenner’s Sprinter, one of the US reality TV star’s newest business ventures, as well as French women’s fashion brand Destree, co-founded by Géraldine Guyot, the wife of LVMH founder’s son Alexandre Arnault, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The global push comes as HongShan, led by billionaire Neil Shen, widely considered China’s top tech investor, has faced frustration from some limited partners over the pace of dealmaking for its $9bn US fund, after raising the money two years ago.

HongShan has both dollar and renminbi funds, which are managed by overlapping teams, but they are increasingly having to pursue separate strategies. The group, which closed a fresh Rmb18bn fund in March, is free to use this money to invest in hot areas in Chinese tech such as robotics and generative artificial intelligence.

“They are deploying the US fund but very slowly,” one limited partner told the Financial Times.

HongShan has invested only 10 to 20 per cent of its two later-stage funds, both sized at $3.6bn, according to two people familiar with the matter. This gives it four to five more years to invest the remaining sum.

The group has been quicker in deploying its earlier stage funds, the seed and venture funds, which are $480mn and $1.3bn, respectively — and have between 20 and 35 per cent invested, these people added.

The lack of high-growth domestic investment options has been exacerbated by Washington’s move to tighten scrutiny of American investment in Chinese high-end technology.

In August, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to ban US investment in Chinese technology with potential dual-use military application, such as semiconductors, quantum computers and AI.

Chinese funds have already pre-emptively been carving out their US LPs from deals that involve high-tech investments, according to industry insiders, leaving them with fewer promising sectors to back as less sensitive consumer companies have been hit hard from the weak economy.

HongShan has instead been using its USD funds to double down on already well-established Chinese start-ups, including building up its position in ByteDance, while buying existing shares in the fast-growing Instagram-like start-up Xiaohongshu.

In general, LPs are keen to see early deployment because it gives more time for the companies to grow in value and for the funds to recoup their investment through IPOs or mergers. LPs typically still have to pay management fees on capital that has not yet been called.

Other US backers of HongShan are more sanguine about the pace of dealmaking. “I’ve been an investor with Neil and the team from the beginning. They are one of the best investments that we’ve made,” said one, adding that HongShan’s push for global deals was a “natural evolution” for a firm of its size and track record.

HongShan is focusing more on Northern Asia and Europe after facing difficulties with US tech deals. This year it was asked to dramatically reduce its stake in HeyGen, a leading AI video company that originated in Shenzhen before migrating to Los Angeles, over national security concerns about Chinese VCs being a significant shareholder, the Financial Times reported.

In recent months HongShan has opened a London office, hiring former Goldman Sachs banker Taro Niggemann, who is charged with hunting for internet and consumer-related deals in the UK and Europe.

The move puts it in more direct competition with its former partner Sequoia, which also has an office in London focused on European start-up investments.

HongShan said: “Since our inception in 2005, we’ve built a diverse portfolio spanning Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia and Europe, proving our strategy thrives across global markets in addition to our portfolios in China.”

The Chinese investment group is hunting for consumer brands in the west, which it can help grow in Asia, as it looks to build on the success of its 2021 investment in Ami Paris, which helped the French designer brand expand in China.

HongShan participated in a $430mn fundraising round earlier this year in UK online bank Monzo, alongside CapitalG, Google’s venture fund GV and Tencent. It also invested this year in the German-based Green Energy Origin, a battery materials start-up.

It also holds a roughly 9 per cent stake in fast-fashion company Shein, which is targeting a London listing if it receives approval from regulators in Beijing, according to two people familiar with the matter.

HongShan also has plans to open a Tokyo office, according to two people familiar with the matter, although one cautioned it was still in the early stages. HongShan declined to comment on its Tokyo office plan.

Its push into Japan follows a rush of other Chinese funds building a presence there, including rival PE group Hillhouse and the Jack Ma-backed Yunfeng, which have both built a presence in the country in recent months for real estate deals.

In Japan, HongShan has invested in construction management software start-up ANDPAD, AI contract management start-up LegalForce and lithium-ion battery venture AESC, according to one person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Additional reporting by Ryan McMorrow in Beijing

Video: Sequoia Capital and the evolution of the VC industry | FT Film

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Top Drug Regulator Is Fired From the F.D.A.

Published

3 hours ago

May 16, 2026

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Top Drug Regulator Is Fired From the F.D.A.

Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.

She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.

Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.

But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”

“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”

As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.

She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.

The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.

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Supreme Court is death knell for Virginia’s Democratic-friendly congressional maps

Published

6 hours ago

May 16, 2026

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Supreme Court is death knell for Virginia’s Democratic-friendly congressional maps

The U.S. Supreme Court

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The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to allow Virginia to use a new congressional map that favored Democrats in all but one of the state’s U.S. House seats. The map was a key part of Democrats’ effort to counter the Republican redistricting wave set off by President Trump.

The new map was drawn by Democrats and approved by Virginia voters in an April referendum. But on May 8, the Supreme Court of Virginia in a 4-to-3 vote declared the referendum, and by extension the new map, null and void because lawmakers failed to follow the proper procedures to get the issue on the ballot, violating the state constitution.

Virginia Democrats and the state’s attorney general then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to put into effect the map approved by the voters, which yields four more likely Democratic congressional seats. In their emergency application, they argued the Virginia Supreme Court was “deeply mistaken” in its decision on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.” Further, they asserted the decision “overrode the will of the people” by ordering Virginia to “conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected.”

Republican legislators countered that it would be improper for the U.S. Supreme Court to wade into a purely state law controversy — especially since the Democrats had not raised any federal claims in the lower court.

Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Republicans without explanation leaving in place the state court ruling that voided the Democratic-friendly maps.

The court’s decision not to intervene was its latest in emergency requests for intervention on redistricting issues. In December, the high court OK’d Texas using a gerrymandered map that could help the GOP win five more seats in the U.S. House. In February, the court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map, adopted to offset Texas’s map. Then in March, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the redrawing of a New York map expected to flip a Republican congressional district Democratic.

And perhaps most importantly, in April, the high court ruled that a Louisiana congressional map was a racial gerrymander and must be redrawn. That decision immediately set off a flurry of redistricting efforts, particularly in the South, where Republican legislators immediately began redrawing congressional maps to eliminate long established majority Black and Hispanic districts.

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Explosion at Lumber Mill in Searsmont, Maine, Draws Large Emergency Response

Published

15 hours ago

May 15, 2026

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Explosion at Lumber Mill in Searsmont, Maine, Draws Large Emergency Response

An explosion and fire drew a large emergency response on Friday to a lumber mill in the Midcoast region of Maine, officials said.

The State Police and fire marshal’s investigators responded to Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, about 72 miles northeast of Portland, said Shannon Moss, a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

Mike Larrivee, the director of the Waldo County Regional Communications Center, said the number of victims was unknown, cautioning that “the information we’re getting from the scene is very vague.”

“We’ve sent every resource in the county to that area, plus surrounding counties,” he said.

Footage from the scene shared by WABI-TV showed flames burning through the roof of a large structure as heavy, dark smoke billowed skyward.

The Associated Press reported that at least five people were injured, and that county officials were considering the incident a “mass casualty event.”

Catherine Robbins-Halsted, an owner and vice president at Robbins Lumber, told reporters at the scene that all of the company’s employees had been accounted for.

Gov. Janet T. Mills of Maine said on social media that she had been briefed on the situation and urged people to avoid the area.

“I ask Maine people to join me in keeping all those affected in their thoughts,” she said.

Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said on social media that he was aware of the fire and explosion.

“As my team and I seek out more information, I am praying for the safety and well-being of first responders and everyone else on-site,” he said.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.