As Leonardo DiCaprio finally takes home a well-deserved, and long-awaited Oscar in the ‘Best Actor’ category, Tracxn takes a close look at some of the actors investments
Spoiler Alert: Leonardo DiCaprio has finally won his first Oscar for the ‘Best Actor’ category in the 88th edition of the Academy Awards, adding another feather in the cap of the 41-year old Hollywood veteran.
But besides being a prolific actor, DiCaprio has also stood out for being an environmentalist, and a philanthropist, and also a keen investor.
Here are some of the Oscar Winner’s portfolio companies.
For starters, a look at the Academy Award winner’s portfolio reveals his stand as an environmental activist and a philanthropist. For instance, Diamond Foundry, one of DiCaprio’s recent investments, is looking to change the diamond industry as we know it. The 100-billion dollar diamond industry has often been stained with malpractices involving child labour, human-rights infringements, ecological destruction, and cartel-like pricing. Diamond Foundry is looking to change things around, by ‘growing’ their very own diamonds, that are as high-quality as natural gems. Besides DiCaprio, who played a gem smuggler in Blood Diamond, and the VC investors mentioned in the infographic above, Diamond Foundry has been back by Angels including entrepreneurs Mark and Alison Pincus and Ev Williams, and former COO of Facebook, Owen Van Natta.
Rubicon Global is another investment bet by DiCaprio which was from an environmental point-of-view. The Atlanta-based startup has often been touted as “Uber for trash” or “Uber for recycling”, and offers waste and recycling management services. Rubicon provides waste recovery and recycling, recycling equipment maintenance, waste stream management, recyclable commodity marketing, and vendor performance monitoring services. Their main focus is to avoid waste into landfill and at the same time generate benefit for customers through their innovative technologies while covering a wider area of industries including Food, Grocery, Hospitality, Education, Government, Healthcare and Retail etc. In September, the company raised $50M in an unattributed round from Nima Capital, Goldman Sachs, Wellington and Tudorfunds.
Another of DiCaprio’s environmentally friendly investments went into Fisker Technologies, which was a green American sports car company which aimed to produce an environmentally friendly car without compromising on performance. It launched Fisker Karma, one of the world’s first production plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. In February 2014, the company was bought by Chinese auto-parts conglomerate Wanxiang Group.
On another note, Mobli was one of DiCaprio’s first bets where he participated in the startups first round of funding of $4M. He also serves as an advisor for the company. Other private investors in Mobli include the likes of DiCaprio’s Hollywood buddy, Tobey Maguire, Tennis superstar Serena Williams, former professional American road racing cyclist Lance Armstrong, Carlos Slim and Kenges Rakishev.
