Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 15

• Uber Sets Sights on Leveraged Loans for Even More Money: Uber has raised more than $14 billion using all sorts of creative funding sources. Now it may add something new to the list: the leveraged loan market. The ride-hailing start-up is looking to issue as much as $2 billion in securities to investors, said a person briefed on the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are managing the process, said the person, adding that the deal has not begun yet and may still fall apart.By tapping leveraged loans, Uber is adding to its trove of billions made up of many types of securities, which the company has been spending as it expands worldwide. Uber has raised equity from traditional venture capital sources, strategic corporate investors and private equity. This month, the company said that it had raised $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Uber has also raised billions in convertible debt, which can be exchanged for equity at a future date. Uber has redefined private fund-raising, drawing hundreds of millions in new cash or debt at a rapid pace of once every few months. The company needs financing as it now operates in at least 69 countries and is fighting an expensive battle in China against a rival, Didi Chuxing, which is also raising money to expand. Leveraged loans are rarely used among start-ups. A leveraged loan is a security issued to a company that has a lot of debt on its books already, and thus is perceived by investors as being a higher risk. The loans are typically used for leveraged buyouts and are seldom seen in Silicon Valley. Uber has been able to tap less traditional funding sources because investors think its size and scale make it a safer bet than other Silicon Valley companies. Uber’s valuation of $62.5 billion — making it the highest valued venture-backed start-up in the world — would not change with this new investment. Leveraged loans also allow Uber to raise money without diluting the holdings of its many equity investors — some of which have been through more than a dozen rounds of financing.

• Twitter has invested in music streaming service SoundCloud: Two years ago Twitter thought about buying SoundCloud, but ended up walking away from the music service. Now Twitter has bought a piece of SoundCloud instead. Twitter has invested around $70 million in the music service, as part of a round that should end up in the $100 million-range, according to sources familiar with the deal. The round is expected to value SoundCloud at about $700 million — the same value that investors placed on the company in 2014, when it raised $60 million; since then it has also raised a debt round. It’s unclear whether the Twitter investment is part of a strategic partnership, but that would make sense: Twitter might view via an integration with SoundCloud as a way to increase growth and engagement, and SoundCloud may look at Twitter as a way to promote its newly launched subscription service, which is crucial to the company’s plans. And both companies could use some help. Twitter has been punished by Wall Street for its inability to add users at a rapid clip; SoundCloud’s flat valuation indicates that investors are also worried about its own growth prospects.

• Alibaba Tries to Shore Up Investors’ Confidence: The Alibaba Group of China has disappointed investors since its record-breaking American stock listing nearly two years ago, as volatile financial results and regulatory run-ins have driven the price of its shares down almost to where they began. Now the e-commerce giant is trying to reassure. For the first time, Alibaba on Tuesday offered investors financial guidance for the coming year, saying that it expected revenue growth to accelerate from last year’s pace. At a meeting at its Hangzhou headquarters, Alibaba cited strength in its core business, despite China’s slowing economic growth, as well as benefits from new ventures that have raised eyebrows among some investors The forecast comes as Alibaba seeks to demonstrate that its strategy, which has long focused on growth, is good for business. In China, Alibaba operates online sales platforms that connect consumers with mom-and-pop stores, as well as with global brands like Burberry and Zara. It has been showing sales growth on its platforms using a measure called gross merchandise volume, a yardstick for transactions across its platforms. Alibaba said on Tuesday that it would de-emphasize that figure, saying it would no longer report it quarterly. It will continue to report an annual figure, and offered a target for 2020.

• India's Space Program Takes On Elon Musk: India’s space agency will launch a record 22 satellites on a single rocket as it tries to ease a global backlog and demonstrate the ability to compete with commercial spaceflight companies run by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.Satellites from the U.S., India, Canada and Germany will enter orbit after a scheduled June 20 liftoff from the Sriharikota barrier island along the southeast coast, the agency’s chairman, A.S. Kiran Kumar, said in an interview in Bengaluru.The 22 machines being launched next week include an Earth observation satellite to capture light invisible to the naked eye. It is the biggest single launch by India, trailing Russia’s 33 in 2014 and NASA’s 29 the year before. India last month successfully launched a scale model of a reusable spacecraft, a project that in time could pit the nation against Bezos and Musk in the race to make access to space cheaper and easier. The country also injected a probe into Mars’ atmosphere in 2014 for just $74 million, about 11 percent of the cost of the U.S.’s Maven probe.