Billionaires Alisher Usmanov and Yury Milner, who control 10 percent of Facebook through DST Global, started a second fund to invest in Internet companies, three people with knowledge of the matter said.
The investors registered DST Global 2 and expect to complete the first round of fundraising in the summer, said the people, who declined to be identified until the project becomes fully operational.
DST Global 2 acquired a stake in Groupon during the coupon web site's latest sale of new shares, the people said. The fund may also buy 5 percent of online music site Spotify for $50 million, Vedomosti reported Tuesday.
Leonid Solovyov, a spokesman for Milner, and an Usmanov aide who asked not to be identified, declined to comment.
Yury Milner is the buyer of a $75 million, 25,500-square-foot mansion in Los Altos Hills, California, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Rumors that Milner had bought the hilltop home, which has five bedrooms, nine bathrooms and its own carwash, had been circulating in Silicon Valley real estate circles for weeks. Milner spokesman Leonid Solovyov disputed only one part of the rumor — that the deal involved pre-IPO Facebook shares. "That is absolutely untrue," Solovyov said. Facebook "or any other stocks were not part of this transaction." He added that "Yury does not have immediate plans to move to the valley."
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