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Trump is Creating a Sovereign Wealth Fund

Trump is Creating a Sovereign Wealth Fund

Christopher Webster
February 04, 2025

Startups:

Google and DeepMind alums raise $10M:

Qeen.ai is a Dubai-based startup that is founded by former DeepMind and Google employees. The three of them spent years working on AI before they ventured off on their own. What is qeen.ai? It is one of the startups that is working on bringing an e-commerce AI shopping assistant to market. Investors and startups alike believe that shopping will soon be focused on chatting with an assistant, and businesses will have everything automated behind the scenes. The team at qeen.ai has raised a $10 million seed round to build out their platform. Prosus Ventures, a major e-commerce investor, led the seed round, which is not only one of the largest in the Middle East’s AI industry but in MENA overall. The VC believes qeen.ai is well-positioned to bring AI-driven automation to merchants as AI agents reshape online marketplaces. If investors and startups are right, how much longer until we have AI shopping assistants?

$235M for Canada’s StackAdapt:

Even with the U.S. and Canada duking it out over tariffs, a tech company based out of Toronto is announcing a major funding round. StackAdapt, a programmatic advertising startup, has just raised $235 million in equity funding, with Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG), the investment arm of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan leading the growth round. Intrepid Growth Partners, a firm based between Toronto and London, is also participating, along with four other investors that are not being named. This is one of the bigger funding rounds for a Canadian-based startup. The company’s previous valuation was $600 million, but they are not disclosing the valuation with the new round. No doubt AI will be a big part of advertising for years to come, but how effective will it be in 2025?

Venture:

a16z still using scouts in Europe:

Even with Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) closing its London crypto-focused office, the VC giant has dozens of scouts across Europe looking for early-stage startups. Some scouts are said to work at companies like Poolside and 11x, the latter of which just raised a $50 million Series B led by the firm. Though many of a16z’s scouts are based in the U.S., the European scouts can be found in countries such as Sweden, France, Germany, Estonia, the U.K., and Amsterdam. Some of them include Pippa Lamb, a partner at Sweet Capital, and Guillaume Roux-Romestaing, who leads a partnership at 11x. These scouts tend to do up to eight deals a year and write checks from $10,000 to $25,000. There are rules, though. For example, they are apparently not allowed to invest directly in NFTs. Will Europe be able to produce more unicorn startups or is it just to hard for startups to thrive there?

Big Tech:

Creating a U.S. sovereign wealth fund?:

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to create a U.S. sovereign wealth fund and suggested that it could be used to purchase TikTok. Didn’t he promise to stop spending money? The fund is expected to be created in the next 12 months by the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments, though it’s not immediately clear how. He believes he can use tariffs and other “intelligent things” to fund this. As we all know by now Trump signed an executive order last month to delay the TikTok ban deadline by 75 days. Trump has said he has been in talks with multiple people who are interested in purchasing the social network. Last week, he said Microsoft was in talks to buy TikTok, and previously said he would be open to Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle chairman Larry Ellison buying TikTok. Even though all these people could buy TikTok we still have yet to see anyone persuade the Chinese to sell to them. The biggest question is with Trump’s focus on cutting government spending and lowering the debt why is he now so focused on spending money to create a sovereign wealth fund?