Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket
Look Out Amazon, Here Comes...Rakuten?
Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten announced on Tuesday it is acquiring Ebates for $1 billion.
The acquisition, which Rakuten hinted at last week, is part of the Japanese company’s push to grow its base beyond its domestic market and hopefully, become a global player. Having made some $1.2 billion acquisitions to date along these lines, this is Rakuten’s most ambitious move to date.
However, investors are dubious that the company can absorb yet another foreign acquisition, much less one the size of Ebates, despite Rakuten’s strong cash position.
Then there is the ever-present Amazon, which dominates the e-commerce market in the U.S. Few believe it will falter in the face of Chinese giant Alibaba, much less a Rakuten-Ebates combo.
Rakuten Goes Forth
Not surprisingly, Rakuten says it is undaunted. For starters, it has assembled a very interesting mix of acquisitions. There is messaging app Viber, which it purchased for $900 million in February, the Canadian ebook offering Kobo, Spanish video service Wuaki.tv, Viki, a digital content platform and Buy.com.
Now it has picked up Ebates.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2014/09/...ere-comes-rakuten/
Clear Street initiates coverage on AST Spacemobile stock with Buy rating
Published 07/10/2025
Clear Street initiated coverage on AST Spacemobile with a Buy rating and a $59.00 price target on Thursday. The stock, which has surged over 100% year-to-date, currently trades near $42.50, with analyst targets ranging from $30 to $64.
The research firm sees AST Spacemobile as a long-term mobile growth opportunity targeting approximately 5.6 billion global mobile users with patented satellite technology that eliminates the need for specialized ground equipment.
The firm highlighted key collaborations supporting AST Spacemobile’s growth potential, including partnerships with Verizon (NYSE:VZ), AT&T, Vodafone (NASDAQ:VOD), and Rakuten.
Rakuten Group Inc. has engaged banks for a yen bond issuance totaling about 150 billion yen (US$1 billion), according to Daiwa Securities Co., one of the underwriters.
The Japanese ecommerce firm aims to attract both retail and institutional investors.
Of the total offering, around 130 billion yen (US$888.1 million) will target retail buyers. The institutional portion will be issued as sustainability debt.
https://www.techinasia.com/news/...engages-banks-for-1b-yen-bond-deal
Rakuten’s yen bond offering represents a notable shift in its funding strategy following heavy reliance on the U.S. dollar market.
The company issued $3.8 billion in dollar bonds between January and April 2024 alone, highlighting its previous dependence on foreign currency financing.
This pivot to yen-denominated bonds may be aimed at reducing foreign exchange risk, especially significant for a company reporting 19 consecutive quarterly losses as mentioned in the news article.
The decision to target both retail and institutional investors with different bond structures demonstrates a sophisticated approach to capital raising, with the retail portion accounting for approximately 87% of the total offering.
By leveraging its strong consumer brand recognition in Japan, Rakuten can potentially secure better terms from retail investors than it might from institutional investors who would place greater emphasis on its speculative-grade rating.
https://www.techinasia.com/news/...engages-banks-for-1b-yen-bond-deal
Rakuten’s Mikitani wants to sell bonds to Japanese investors
Jan 17, 2025
Billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani said that his Rakuten Group is keen to sell more bonds to Japanese investors to help diversify funding that has been focused on overseas debt markets.
"Bond investors are very, very confident or building their confidence in our business,” Mikitani, 59, said in an interview, pointing out that the yields sought by investors when buying the e-commerce conglomerate’s debt had declined "significantly.”
Market pricing indicates that views on Rakuten are improving after years of losses and a stretched balance sheet. Successfully tapping the domestic bond market would add to this momentum, though many challenges remain.
Rakuten’s credit rating sits below the "A” level required by many investors in Japan, it is due to redeem ¥400 billion ($2.6 billion) in bonds in the first half of this year, and despite improvement, Rakuten still faces large losses in its mobile business.
Mikitani said nothing has been decided yet on the size and timing of any debt issuance in Japan. The company’s last domestic sale was in February 2023, to retail investors.
Still, the spread between the yield on Rakuten’s debt and Japanese government bonds has narrowed significantly, showing greater investor confidence. For Rakuten yen bonds due in December 2026, the spread contracted to about 180 basis points as of Thursday, down from around 490 basis points a year earlier, according to the data compiled by Bloomberg.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/01/17/...n-mikitani-bonds/
Operating model challenges often mirror telco org structures
Rakuten is not a telecom company. We are an internet company doing telecom. That means we understand philosophically how to build platforms, run our business on data and drive growth through digital enablement. The solutions are always the same:
Simplify, don’t complicate.
Build horizontal platforms across the total business.
Use data to drive operational efficiency and business advantage.
Having led operations initiatives within a major telco, I have seen firsthand the organizational structures that can surface.
In many cases, the teams that plan, build and operate the network are siloed from each other. Each department moves full speed ahead with its own systems, data and priorities. Sure, there are the recurring pushes for a centralized data strategy, but adhering long-term to these strategies can prove to be a challenge in itself.
There's often hesitation to hand over control, driven by concerns that centralized teams may not bring the same level of care and contextual understanding as the teams who serve as dedicated custodians of the data.
So, we get the fragmented data, conflicting goals and ultimately, limited visibility.
This may seem at odds with the desire to work from a unified platform and clean analytics. For the most part, there is agreement on this dichotomy. If it is not addressed, efforts to modernize and automate keep running into the same wall.
It is increasingly clear that modernization is no longer optional given legacy network inefficiency and aging workforces, necessitating faster transformation.
5G Standalone and slicing will only increase complexity, exposing telcos to growing risk if foundational issues remain unresolved.
Advancing past patchwork OSS approaches
It is not a secret that OSS management looks similar to even a decade ago.
All these various stacks were less detrimental when services were simpler and customers interacted with just one part of the network at a time.
Those days are gone.
Customer experiences now span multiple services and infrastructure layers as the “unified view” nirvana state remains elusive.
Horizontal, data-centric platforms are emerging as essential then to build the kind of observability, automation and AI intelligence that will take operators where they want.
It’s not about just layering AI on top of the old way of working, but building a different foundation entirely.
We have successfully implemented a foundation that can surface data from across domains and align to a single operational context. Because of this, the data can serve the needs of an AI tool while giving project managers, field ops and assurance teams that long-desired unified view.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/...ent-operations-begin-day-zero-hsede
24/02/2025
Telecom is a complex business. And telecom has a love/hate relationship with complexity. Complexity that comes at a cost – in more systems, more people and skills, in training and re-training. The price of progress is high, and getting higher, as telcos struggle to both retain the knowledge required to run their older networks and hire the skills and expertise to run new ones. The effect of that is low investor confidence – in an industry that is fully understood as foundational to the modern world.
Appledore sees some evidence that this is changing. In particular, some in the industry are promoting simplification to the level of strategy. Specifically, an active effort to substantially reduce the count of ALL the systems used to plan, build, operate and assure networks – by changing the fundamental approach.
Simpler is better.
Rakuten has a history of challenging the accepted wisdom. Having rolled out a world-class network nationwide in just three years, based on a radically simpler alternative architecture to conventional networks, Rakuten is now challenging the conventional wisdom in OSS: that it must be complex. Sophisticated? Yes. Powerful? Yes. Complex? No. The Rakuten mantra is not to manage complexity, but instead to eliminate it. Simpler is better, faster, and cheaper.
This paper looks at the major changes Rakuten Symphony has made in its OSS business and proposition as it seeks to continue providing the industry with a visionary new alternative to decades of received wisdom. We explore where and how Rakuten has removed complexity from OSS – without losing capability. Its thinking about data, observability and AI is central to this new vision, in the way that hierarchies, standardised interfaces and inventory have been for conventional OSS.
https://appledoreresearch.com/report/rakutens-oss-simplification/
Research and Markets
July 2, 2025
The B2C Mobility Sharing Market is set to soar from USD 57.9 billion in 2025 to USD 325.5 billion by 2034, at a CAGR of 21.1%. Driven by urbanization, eco-awareness, and demand for flexible transport, the market thrives on apps, EV investments, and autonomy.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/...aring-market-outlook-130900369.html
April 23, 2025
Diversify your affiliate program and watch your performance soar! Our latest Partner Spotlight highlights the innovative up-and-coming publishers on the Rakuten Advertising network.
https://blog.rakutenadvertising.com/en-au/...liate-partner-spotlight/
Rakuten Group Co., Ltd.'s 25th series of unsecured bonds have a relatively high interest rate level (tentative conditions) of 2.0~2.6% per annum for a short period of 3 years. Although the rating is "A- (JCR)" and is slightly lower within investment grade, it can be said that it is an attractive product.
Another major feature is that it comes with the benefit of being able to use Rakuten Mobile's eSIM for free for one year. Details such as benefits and conditions will be announced on the official Rakuten Securities website at a later date.
https://kabukiso.com/bond/corporate/rakuten/
Bluevine is the largest small business banking platform in the U.S., serving as the financial operating system for startups and small businesses. Through a single account, companies can earn more, save more, borrow, and manage their money whenever and wherever they do business – without ever stepping into a branch. Accessible through one dashboard, its product suite integrates high-yield business checking, accounts payable, debit and credit cards, loans, and lines of credit. Since 2013, Bluevine has served over 750,000 customers, delivered over $16 billion in loans, and is currently trusted with over $1.3 billion in managed customer deposits.
https://www.bluevine.com/newsroom/...yment-links-for-small-businesses
Bluevine, a leading online provider of everyday financing to small businesses, announced Wednesday it has closed $49 million in funding. The Series D funding round was led by existing investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, 83North, Citi Ventures, Rakuten FinTech Fund and Silicon Valley Bank.
https://www.bluevine.com/newsroom/...evine-raises-49-million-series-d
BlueVine, a US-based online small-business finance platform backed by financial services firm Citi and e-commerce and financial technology company Rakuten, raised $60m in a series E round yesterday.
The round was led by Menlo Ventures and included SVB Capital as well as all major existing investors, though BlueVine did not offer further details about which its backers it classifies as major shareholders.
Founded in 2013, BlueVine has developed a cloud-based platform for SMEs to access invoice factoring and business lines of credit. The company expects to process more than $1bn in transaction volume this year.
The series E capital will go towards an expansion of the existing two products, develop additional offerings and accelerate the recruitment of R&D staff.
BlueVine previously closed a $49m series D round in December 2016 that included Citi Ventures and Rakuten FinTech Fund, respective investment vehicles of Citi and Rakuten. The round was filled out by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, 83North and SVB.
The company has raised $173m in funding to date, with Rakuten FinTech Fund previously also supporting a $40m series C round in January 2016 that was led by Menlo and also included Lightspeed, 83North, Correlation Ventures, SVB and unnamed angel investors.
https://globalventuring.com/bluevine-grows-with-60m-series-e/
Key Market Trends & Insights
In terms of region, North America was the largest revenue generating market in 2024.
Country-wise, India is expected to register the highest CAGR from 2025 to 2030.
In terms of segment, hardware accounted for a revenue of USD 3,017.5 million in 2024.
Software is the most lucrative component segment registering the fastest growth during the forecast period.
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/...-analysis/open-ran-market-report
Key takeaways
Open RAN networks are significantly gaining popularity in Europe. Open RAN allows mobile network operators to disaggregate their RAN components through open interfaces and virtualization, thereby allowing multiple suppliers to provide solutions to the traditionally vender-locked network architecture.
Security concerns have led countries, to impose restrictions on Chinese network equipment vendors, citing concerns over potential backdoors and security vulnerabilities. This can be seen as one of the drivers behind governments ʼ endeavors to promote Open RAN adoption through R&D initiatives to enhance network security, promote vendor diversity over China-de pendency, and speed up 5G rollouts. The market for this technology is expected to grow – in the initial phase driven by MNOs’ trials & testing complimented by government funds.
MNOs such as Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, 1&1, Telefonica, and Orange, are all advocating for Open RAN, adopting it in their networks, and forming industry bodies to jointly build up the solution and the policies governing it. As the technology continues to evolve, more players are expected to enter the market, creating a diverse ecosystem that will bring numerous benefits to mobile network operators. These include vendor diversification, flexible deployment, innovation, cost savings. Open RAN technology offers many This may require new training programs or favorable price agreements, the threat of unmet demand due to the potentially insufficient scale of the new suppliers, and the possible escalation of costs, as larger-scale incumbent suppliers often have the capacity to offer more competitive pricing. Organizational challenges related to Open RAN can include issues related to skill sets, training, and organizational structures. Operators must ensure that they have the necessary technical expertise to deploy and operate Open RAN systems effectively. hiring additional staff with specific skill sets. They may also need to rethink their organizational structures to take full advantage of the benefits that Open RAN offers. benefits, but there are still significant challenges which prevent large scale deployments in the short term. This includes technological, commercial, and organizational gaps to be addressed. Furthermore, the decision to adopt an open architecture solution needs to be backed up with an executable strategy and well-defined.
https://www.deloitte.com/content/dam/assets-zone2/...-Network-Era.pdf
Jul 10, 2025 7:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Backed by strong global demand, Airalo is scaling its eSIM solutions and infrastructure to power the next generation of travel with borderless mobile access for consumers and businesses alike.
Airalo, the world’s first and largest eSIM provider, today announced a $220m investment led by new investor, CVC. The investment includes new growth capital valuing Airalo at over $1 billion, marking its status as the industry’s first unicorn. Driven by surging global demand, Airalo has continued its rapid expansion and now serves over 20 million travelers across 200+ destinations. With a new app experience and unlimited data plans launching this summer, Airalo is setting a new standard for global connectivity. Airalo’s mobile app empowers travellers to instantly get the highest quality roaming experience when abroad, at prices that are a fraction of what they would normally pay.
Airalo is backed by a global network of venture capital, private equity and strategic telecom investors, including CVC, Peak XV, e& capital, Antler, KPN Ventures, Wayra Ventures (Telefonica), Bell Ventures, Orange Ventures, Liberty Global Ventures, Rakuten Capital, Singtel Innov8, Telekom Innovation Pool, LG Technology Ventures, GO Ventures, Plug and Play, and other investors.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/...Investment-Round-of-%24220m
Feb 5, 2025
Tapfun, developer of a cloud gaming platform, announced on the 31st that it has raised Series A funding from Rakuten Capital, Rakuten Group’s CVC. Details including the funding amount were not disclosed.
Additionally, Kazuyoshi Abumi, Executive Officer and Head of Business Development at Rakuten, will join as an outside director.
Founded in September 2020, Tapfun provides “TapFun,” a cloud gaming platform that addresses challenges faced by smartphone and PC games. The platform offers high-quality games through browsers without requiring downloads, enabling comfortable gaming experiences on smartphones, PCs, and tablets regardless of device specifications or OS. For game companies, they offer an 18% commission rate, lower than other major platforms, helping improve profitability.
The company currently operates “PROJECT XENO,” a Web3 PvP game with GameFi elements. In this game, players battle using unique NFT characters and can earn UT (Utility Tokens) through victories. Earned UTs can be used for developing NFT characters or acquiring new ones, and NFT characters can be traded in the in-app marketplace.
PROJECT XENO uses two types of tokens: GXE (Governance Token) and UXE (Utility Token), with GXE having a total supply set at 6 billion. This token can be used for purchasing NFT characters, leveling up, buying items, and trading on cryptocurrency exchanges.
With this funding, the company aims to strengthen its lineup of attractive game titles and pursue further business growth. They also plan to explore collaborations with the “Rakuten Ecosystem,” which comprises Rakuten’s wide range of services and member base of over 100 million users.
https://thebridge.jp/en/2025/02/...ies-a-funding-from-rakuten-capital
The firm said in a statement that this approval further accelerates its evolution into a fully integrated shopping and payments ecosystem.
With this license, ShopBack is authorized to provide specific regulated payment services in Singapore.
This means the firm can directly enable merchants to accept payments, and let customers pay using ShopBack Pay in Singapore.
With ShopBack Pay now operating under formal regulatory oversight, the company is well-positioned to scale its payment offering and strengthen merchant partnerships.
The ShopBack Group is a shopping, rewards, and payments platform, serving over 50 million shoppers across 13 markets.
In 2025, the group continues its global growth with its expansion into North America.
Founded in 2014, the firm now powers over $4 billion in annual sales for over 20,000 online and in-store partners.
It is facilitating upwards of half a million transactions daily.
https://technode.global/2025/07/10/...-from-mas-for-digital-payments/
Next-gen Japanese Large Language Model R&D to begin in August, with aim to realize highly personalized AI agents
Tokyo, July 15, 2025 - Rakuten Group, Inc. today announced it has been selected for the third term of the Generative AI Accelerator Challenge (GENIAC) project promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) with the aim of strengthening Japan's generative AI development.
https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2025/0715_02.html
July 02, 2025
Rakuten Mobile Park Miyagi is constantly evolving into a space where a wide range of customers can enjoy themselves, not just baseball fans. In this RNN video, two second-year Rakutenians from Rakuten Baseball report from the stadium grounds the highlights of the 2025 season renovations. The newly introduced karaoke gondola and sauna-style gondola are must-see additions!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOEM2mV63Ek&t=7s
July 11, 2025
On the sidelines of Rakuten Optimism U.S. 2025, Rakuten International CEO Amit Patel reveals the global businesses driving company growth, how Rakuten leverages AI to boost efficiency and innovation, and the importance of building resilience in the workplace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XziBZo1hpc4