Out of all those stories, I'm most surprised SoftBank walked away on Seismic. Maybe they're scared that all the recent unicorns are going to lose value, but it's a pretty safe/standard company that wasn't depending on Softbank to live, and opening the Japanese market was a Softbank-specific perk.
Funding an already-unicorn at a high valuation isn't likely to get you the usual VC 10x, I guess. But it sounds like a way to help stabilize Softbank's rep with a modest win, not a risky bet to bail out of.
Out of all those stories, I'm most surprised SoftBank walked away on Seismic. Maybe they're scared that all the recent unicorns are going to lose value, but it's a pretty safe/standard company that wasn't depending on Softbank to live, and opening the Japanese market was a Softbank-specific perk.
Funding an already-unicorn at a high valuation isn't likely to get you the usual VC 10x, I guess. But it sounds like a way to help stabilize Softbank's rep with a modest win, not a risky bet to bail out of.