Columbus Nova Technology Partners, a California-based venture fund controlled by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, is to acquire a minority stake in Gawker Media. The amount and the terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
As its founder Nick Denton admitted in an internal memo, Gawker Media needed to strengthen its financial reserves as it is preparing for a $100-million privacy lawsuit.
One of the largest media players in the USA, Gawker Media has seven media brands — Gawker in news and politics, Gizmodo for technology, Lifehacker for productivity, Deadspin for sports, Jezebel for the modern woman, Kotaku for video games and Jalopnik for car culture.
According to Business Insider, the company is worth between $300 million and $400 million.
Gawker Media had never raised funding from investors so far. Last summer, however, the company secured an $8 million loan from Silicon Valley Bank to help finance the expansion and relocation of its headquarters to a large office in Manhattan. The deal also included an open credit line of an additional $7.5 million, as noted by The Wall Street Journal.
Russian oligarchs fond of startups
Viktor Vekselberg originally made his wealth in the metals and energy industries, accumulating a net worth now estimated at more than $10 billion. In 2010, the Russian government appointed him to head the Skolkovo project, an international tech hub still under completion on the outskirts of Moscow.
In 2013, the Russian billionaire backed Maxfield Capital, a venture fund operating globally from its offices in Moscow, New York City and Tel Aviv. One of Maxfield’s latest investment went to On Farm, a California-based startup developing an IoT platform to manage farm hardware technologies.
Vekselberg is not the only Russian billionaire to invest in international startups. It has just been revealed that Alisher Usmanov, a key shareholder of the Mail.ru Group, owns a stake in Uber via his fund USM, along with Dagestani oligarch Ziyavudin Magomedov via Caspian VC.
Also active on the global tech scene is Roman Abramovich, who has invested in a number of startups essentially in Israel, Russia, the US and the UK.
