Two US Hyperloop Startups Line Up Financing From China (bloomberg.com)

Los Angeles startups Arrivo and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies have reportedly secured financing from Chinese state-backed companies. "Lining up potential funding helps solve one of the biggest obstacles for hyperloop systems: They will be extremely expensive to build," reports Bloomberg. From the report: Arrivo, founded by a former senior engineer at Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said it secured a $1 billion credit line with Genertec America Inc., a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned entity based in Beijing that has helped finance and build high-speed rail and other infrastructure projects in Iran, Turkey and elsewhere. The credit line will go to backers of a future project using Arrivo technology, not to the startup itself. [The Genertec debt could be used to construct a project using the company's technology anywhere in the world, not necessarily in China.] Separately, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies said it plans to work on a 10-kilometer test track in Tongren, part of China's Guizhou province, at an initial cost of about $300 million. State entity Tongren Transportation & Tourism Investment Group will provide half the funds and seek private investors for the other half, HyperloopTT said. The precise route is yet to be determined.

Comments

Re:What a risk.

[hey!]

First of all, this is credit, not investment. It's a different game, because if things go belly up as creditor you're at the head of the line to be repaid; as an owner you're at the tail. I've seen deals where creditors moved in, took over IP and other assets put up as collateral, and started up successful companies without the debt burden the technology's creators were operating under. Unless the other investors or owners can come up with a huge bag of cash immediately, they end up with nothing.

If you've got deep enough pockets, being the largest creditor could be a better way to obtain the fruits of a startup's labor than buying an ownership position.

Also, even if this were taking an ownership stake in the company, China as a nation with 1/5 of a world's population is in a different position than an individual investor, who should be focused on future profits. China is playing a minimax strategy where the payoff is national power, not money. An individual who invests out of fears of "missing out" is being irrational; a nation may be choosing to hedge its bets in a very different game. And as a sovereign state China can simply do things that would be illegal for an individual, so the rules of the game it's playing look very different.