THE NEWS WRAP: Ashton Kutcher launches new venture capital fund

Ashton Kutcher and his business partner Guy Oseary are launching a new venture capital fund called Sound Ventures.

 

TechCrunch reports the fund will be stage-agnostic, allowing the pair to invest in later-stage startups.

 

Kutcher has previously invested in companies such as Uber, Spotify and Airbnb through his first fund A-Grade Investments.

 

The actor and tech investor was in Australia last month for the Tech My Way conference, where he speculated that virtual and augmented reality, biotechnology and artificial intelligence were the next big things in tech.

Controversial app developer slams critics

An Aussie app developer who promised to give thousands of dollars to charity and was exposed for not handing over the money has hit back in a rambling Facebook post.

 

Belle Gibson, the founder of The Whole Pantry, solicited donations from around 200,000 people for various causes and said she would give away a quarter of her company’s profits – however, an investigation by The Age found no such contributions were ever made.

 

Now the entrepreneur has hit back, according to Fairfax, writing in a Facebook post that those who were speaking to the media about her were bullying “myself and my family”.

 

“I know the work my company and it’s [sic] contents did changed [sic] hundreds of thousands for the better,” she said.

YouTube could be considering a subscription model for premium content

YouTube could soon have its own paid video on demand service, according to The Verge.

 

The company is exploring the concept as a means to improve its bottom line and allow popular content producers to access a higher percentage of ad revenue.

 

The rumours come from an unnamed executive at a company that partners with YouTube to produce video content.

 

Competition between streaming providers has heated up in the past 12 months, with Netflix confirming it is launching in Australia on March 24 and taking on local companies Quickflix and EzyFlix.

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 145.91 points, falling 0.82% overnight to 17,749.31. The Aussie dollar is currently trading at around 76.23 US cents.

 

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