Ron Burgundy Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 By Sarah McBride SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco-based startup Planet Labs, a company that aims to blanket the skies with low-cost satellites, has raised nearly $140 million from investors that include Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and SpaceX backer Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Now, the company has raised an additional $20 million from an unlikely contender: the venture arm of the International Finance Corporation, a multilateral lending organization that’s part of the World Bank. The IFC describes its mission as "alleviating poverty and creating opportunity." Generally, that has meant investing in emerging markets, not the Silicon Valley.  But lately, the Washington, D.C.-based IFC has taken a broader view of its role, including funding startups it thinks might eventually benefit poverty-stricken countries, even if the companies are U.S.-based and have other funding sources. The Planet Labs investment comes on the heels of the IFC’s $4.5 million investment last year in cloud-connectivity company Ayla and a $5 million investment in 2013 in online-education company Coursera, both based in California. View the full article Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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