Ventures Platform Fund II has closed at $84 million, the Nigerian-headquartered pan-African firm confirmed in its official newsroom, topping both the original $75 million target and the $83 million figure that had circulated in earlier reports. The final close added $20 million to a $64 million first close announced in November 2025. For context: the firm’s debut vehicle, Fund I, raised $46 million in 2022. Fund II is nearly double that, and the LP roster has grown considerably more institutional in the process. Ventures Platform Fund II’s LP base: who came back, and who is new Seven in ten of…
Author: Marcus Hale
Marcus Hale
Marcus Hale has been filing general news for the better part of fifteen years. He started at a regional evening paper, moved to a mid-sized digital outlet covering UK news, and spent three years as a general assignment reporter before going freelance. He has covered inquests, council elections, infrastructure announcements, and the kind of stories that sit on page five but matter on page one. He writes about public services, housing, local government, and the institutional stories that take six months to develop and thirty seconds to read. He prefers facts to angles and considers that unfashionable. Marcus lives in Bristol. He still reads the local paper and thinks that makes him an endangered species.
Türkiye has moved to deepen its role in international climate diplomacy, signing a new cooperation agreement in London and publishing a book on polar research, as the country prepares to host COP31. The two developments, both unveiled in August, tie Türkiye’s domestic zero waste programme and its Arctic and Antarctic science work into London’s international climate action network. The agreement was signed between The Zero Waste Foundation and London Climate Action Week (LCAW), an annual gathering that draws participants from government, cities, business, finance, academia, civil society and local communities. The protocol commits both sides to closer cooperation on climate…
The Ringg AI Series A has closed at $15.5 million after Peak XV Partners joined with a $10 million extension, backing the voice AI startup’s bet that Indian enterprises will pay a premium for automation that actually gets things done. The previous $5.5 million tranche, which came earlier this year, was led by Arkam Ventures, according to the Economic Times, with participation from Groww Founder Fund, Kunal Shah, Whitecap Ventures, and Capital 2B. Ringg’s own announcement rounds the total to $15 million; the individual tranche figures sum to $15.5 million. The pitch is straightforward enough: more than 76% of Indian…
The SpaceX Louisiana spaceport announced for Vermilion Parish is being pitched as the largest commercial launch facility ever built, a $100 billion campus on a former Exxon property along the Gulf Coast, west of New Orleans. SpaceX says construction begins in 2027, with first Starship launches in 2029. Louisiana Economic Development (LED) is a touch more cautious, putting initial operations at 2030. At full buildout, the site is planned to include five launch complexes, each with two launch pads and a propellant farm, according to Louisiana Economic Development’s SpaceX project page. LED describes the Vermilion Parish facility as SpaceX’s ‘fourth…
Kith Fall 2026 menswear arrives with a very specific brief: stop looking, start feeling. Texture is the season’s operative word, and the collection makes a convincing case for it. The buzzwords circulating around the collection include ‘tactile,’ ‘patina,’ and ‘dimensionality.’ That is a lot of vocabulary to justify some nice fabric choices, but the clothes largely earn the language. The breezy stripes, florals, and paisleys of summer are gone. In their place: broken-in leathers, chunky knits, and nubby velvets, many treated or dyed to look weather-worn and properly lived-in. Kith Fall 2026 Menswear and the Quiet Pull of the West…
The Vogue editors’ festival film picks for Venice, Toronto, and the New York Film Festival this season include two Palme d’Or winners, one of which is already slated to open NYFF. Deputy editor Taylor Antrim, plus editors Liam Hess and Lisa Wong Macabasco, broke it all down on the latest episode of The Run-Through, and the list is heavier on awards-season contenders than your average preview podcast. Paper Tiger and the Question Nobody Can Quite Answer The conversation opened on James Gray’s Paper Tiger, which follows two brothers chasing the American Dream in 1980s Queens who get pulled into a…
The Airbound Series A funding round closed on 25 August 2026, bringing in $37 million for the Bengaluru-based drone startup that wants to make moving goods through the air as cheap as trucking them on the ground. Greenoaks led the round, with DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed, and Humba Ventures all participating. Combined with an $8.65 million seed round raised less than a year earlier, the company has now pulled in nearly $50 million in total. The seed round was itself led by Lachy Groom and included backing from senior figures at Tesla, SpaceX, and Anduril, alongside Humba Ventures and Lightspeed.…
This week’s Alibaba AI share placing set the tone for a seven-day stretch in which the industry’s headline story was not a product launch or a model upgrade, but the sheer scale of money and legal exposure now circling the AI industry. Alibaba’s Alibaba AI Share Placing: The HKD Numbers Behind the Headlines The snippet figure of £7.5 billion is a currency-conversion approximation. Alibaba’s SEC filing gives the authoritative figures: the company placed 710 million new shares at HK$112.70 each, raising gross proceeds of HK$80.0 billion and net proceeds of HK$79.7 billion, with the placement closing on 26 August 2026.…
Water-rich foods for hydration deserve a proper seat at the table, not just a footnote below your water bottle. Food accounts for roughly 19% of our total daily water intake, according to the National Academies’ Dietary Reference Intakes report, which means what you eat matters more than most hydration advice lets on. How Much Water Do You Actually Need? The numbers floating around are muddier than they should be. The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health puts the National Academy of Medicine’s beverage-based adequate intake at 13 cups daily for men and 9 cups for women. The higher figures…
Rihanna’s skirt-jean look has a name now: the skean. Spotted leaving dinner at Cesar in Paris, the superstar wore a pair of light-wash jeans featuring a floor-length panel on one side, producing an effect somewhere between tailored denim and a split-hem maxi skirt. It is precisely the kind of thing that reads as bizarre in a description and inexplicably correct in practice. The Rihanna Skirt-Jean Look, Decoded The outfit was styled with minimal fuss: a black zip-up hoodie, a leather Dior bag, and a pair of Miu Miu snakeskin sneakers. On those sneakers alone, there is a bit of a…