Digital Sky Technologies Seeks to Invest $1 Billion on Social Media Companies
Digital Sky Technologies lead by Yuri Milner is aggressively looking for new investment opportunities on the emerging social media business. During the early parts of 2009, Milner didn’t wait for Facebook to call him up but rather, he flew straight to California and met with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Milner paid $200 million dollars for almost 2% stake on Facebook. It has been the trademark of Digital Sky Techbnologies, they search out investment targets that are on the verge of success and are ripe for initial public offering of its shares. Milner bought another $100 million worth of Facebook stocks from other investors in August of 2009.
Business Partners of Digital Sky Technologies (DST)
Milner is always plane-hopping, looking for good deals. He told Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “I am making big investments. You just have to be personally involved.” He said he spends almost 75% of his time traveling around the globe. “We monitor close to 50 companies globally that can be potential investment opportunities,” Milner says. He expects to close one major deal by this year. “I’d like to see DST as a significant global investment company in the Internet arena.” Digital Sky Technologies which is based in Moscow is planning to invest $1 billion dollars on emerging web social startups companies not only the in U.S. but at other countries too.
Milner made another significant investment last December when he again approached Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus. He convinced Pincus that Zynga could use another round of funding even though Zynga was cash rich already from its very successful games FarmVille, Cafe World and Mafia Wars. Milner was very persuasive and came out triumphant. Digital Sky Technologies invested $180 million on Zynga! Mark Pincus couldn’t refused Milner’s offer because “He already had a very sophisticated understanding of social gaming. It was a very good alignment of goals.”
Yuri Milner has hinted he is very much interested in acquiring stakes in Twitter and Foursquare. He confessed, they are his ideal targets for investment for this year. Twitter and Foursquare representatives have declined to comment about Milner’s disclosure. However, Digital Sky Technologies has always been known for aggressive persuasion and experts concur that secret negotiations might already be on the works.
Digital Sky Technologies also holds stakes on Russia’s biggest social networking site, Vkontakte.ru, and has investments on Mail.ru, Russia’s biggest web portal that provides e-mail and other web tools. An insider also said Digital Sky Technologies is presently under negotiation to purchase AOL’s ICQ instant messenger business. AOL ICQ has over 42 million users around the globe and it holds more than 50% of russia’s instant messenger traffic. Analysts estimates AOL’s ICQ could be worth from $90 million to $200 million. Wall Street Journal was first to report Digital Sky Technologies’ interest on acquiring AOL’s ICQ to consolidate its hold on Russia’s web traffic. Milner’s company already owns enough web companies that they already control 70% of Russia’s web traffic.
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