Social media giant Facebook is reportedly planning to hire a team of tech investors that will eventually head soon to be launched multi-million dollar investment fund. This soon to be launched dedicated fund will reportedly help Facebook in investing in promising and bright tech startups.
The dedicated fund will be part of Facebook’s newly created ‘New Product Experimentation Team.’
This news was first reported by news platform Axios. Axios got sniff of this development when it came across a job posting posted by Facebook to hire ‘head of the investment.’ Although this job post has now been deleted (Techpluto could not confirm this), the job profile clearly indicates that this hired employee will assist Facebook in consolidating its presence in the tech startup world.
“In this role, you will manage a multi-million dollar fund that invests in leading private companies alongside top venture capital firms and angel investors,” Facebook said in the job post that was accessed by the above mentioned news portal. “You will develop investment and impact theses, lead the execution of new investments and support existing portfolio companies as needed.”
Axios claims that Facebook has confirmed it about the job posting but declined to disclose any further details about the planned fund.
Stoking the rumors about Zuckerberg’s plan to establish a dedicated startup investment arm is the fact that Facebook has reportedly hired investment veteran Shabih Rizvi. Rizvi is a founding partner of Gradient Ventures, a VC firm dedicated to investing in artificial intelligence (AI) industry.
Techpluto will try to reach out to Rizvi and will update this story as and when we get any comment or quote from him.
Why Facebook’s dedicated startup investment arm matters
Actually Facebook isn’t alien in investing in startups and promising apps. In the case of India, it recently invested in edtech startup Unacademy and has also backed social commerce startup Meesho. Separately, it is now the largest minority stake holder in India’s internet technology giant Reliance Jio.
On the global front, Zuckerberg has been equally aggressive in acquiring stakes in promising startups and companies. Just barely a week ago, the social media giant acquired GIF startup GIPHY.
However, this is probably for the first time that Facebook will have a dedicated internal staff as well as fund to pick up stakes in tech startups. And this development is important in the wake of the growing anti-trust scrutiny that Facebook has been subjected to over the years. Through this dedicated fund, the company is probably trying to find a way out for investing in startups amid the growing concern of anti-trust scrutiny.
For Facebook, it is immensely important to keep finding the next big app and social media companies to ensure that the company always stays ahead in the competition curve. Remember Whatsapp and Instragram and how Facebook overcame the challenge of potential competitors by acquiring these two companies.
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