Blackstone to acquire a 52% stake in R Systems, a publicly traded Indian IT services company, for $359M (Reuters)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Source: Byju’s has paid ~$234M to Blackstone for ~38% shares in Aakash, settling all its dues owed to the PE firm as part of a ~$1B deal from April 2021  —  Byju’s has cleared all its dues to Blackstone by paying $234 million it owed the global investment giant for the $1 billion acquisition of Aakash …

MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Source: Publicly-traded US bitcoin miner Core Scientific is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday, as its valuation fell from $4.3B in July 2021 to $78M  —  – Core Scientific, one of the largest publicly traded crypto mining companies in the U.S., is filing for bankruptcy.

Reuters:
Sources: SoftBank sells 29.35M Paytm shares, or a 4.5% stake, for $200M, causing Paytm stock to drop 9%+; Vision Fund was Paytm’s second-largest shareholder  —  SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) on Thursday sold a 4.5% stake in Indian digital payments giant Paytm (PAYT.NS) through block deals for $200 million …

Dan Primack / Axios:
Source: Tiger Global seeks to raise $6B for its next fund that invests in privately held tech companies, less than half of what it raised for its prior fund  —  Tiger Global is seeking to raise $6 billion for its next fund that invests in privately-held tech companies, according to an investor letter viewed by Axios.

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: after its funds performed poorly, SoftBank considers launching a third Vision Fund; Vision Fund 2 is now worth 19% less than the $49B invested  —  Despite massive losses, Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son has tried to chart a new path for the tech investment giant

Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk:
Binance’s mining service Binance Pool launches a $500M fund to provide 18-to-24-month loans for private and publicly listed Bitcoin miners  —  The entity is the latest to join the growing ranks of alternative lenders looking to provide capital to the distressed mining industry.