Founders now have a way to ensure that their investors haven\u2019t taken money from countries like China, Russia, Iran or Cuba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over 20 venture firms have signed the Clean Capital Certification, attesting that they have not and will not take money from foreign adversaries. Some of the firms that have signed include Marlinspike Partners, Humba Ventures, and Snowpoint Ventures. \u201cWe must ensure that US adversaries do not directly profit from our success, and publicly signing the Clean Capital Certification is a way to commit to that duty as a community,\u201d Craig Cummings, partner at Moonshots Capital, said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pledge was created by Future Union, an advocacy organization that works on issues related to foreign interference in the private sector. The pledge declares that new technologies, in the wrong hands, can \u201ccast a shadow of authoritarianism, misinformation, and division.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Future Union\u2019s executive director Andrew King has been working on the pledge for about three years, but he\u2019s feared Chinese interference much longer. He recalled having long conversations with a friend at the Department of Defense about \u201chow deleterious the China operation was in the US,\u201d and how the country was \u201cinfluencing venture capital and private equity \u2014 through money and other incentives \u2014 to get access to the critical technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
King said that, if a firm has Chinese investors, then it\u2019s possible that those investors \u2014 and then the Chinese government \u2014 could receive proprietary information about portfolio companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the venture capital world, it\u2019s mostly a hypothetical fear, but one that more and more people share. In September, the Financial Times reported that the FBI was investigating California-based venture capital firm Hone Capital for allegedly passing information along to its Chinese investors. And in February, a congressional committee report called out five U.S. investment firms for investing in Chinese companies, claiming these investments helped support China\u2019s military and enabled the country\u2019s human rights abuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congressman John Moolenaar, chairman of the Select Committee on the CCP, applauded the pledge. \u201cAmerican national security and economic prosperity are put at risk when U.S. companies invest in our foremost adversary or welcome CCP-backed investors on their boards,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cInstead, thanks to these patriotic investors, there will now be a standard for Clean Capital Certification that Americans can use to evaluate their investments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Founders now have a way to ensure that their investors haven\u2019t taken money from countries like China, Russia, Iran or Cuba. Over 20 venture firms have signed the Clean Capital Certification, attesting that they have not and will not take money from foreign adversaries. Some of the firms that have signed include Marlinspike Partners, Humba […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1065,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions\/1065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}