Royal Bank of Canada invests in SCO
Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
Expertise Processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science. Credentials
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
entered the open-source spotlight last week with its $50 million investment in the SCO Group, which is embroiled in legal wrangling over Linux and Unix with IBM and Red Hat. What the companies didn't say so loudly, though, is that $30 million of BayStar's investment in SCO was from the Royal Bank of Canada, according to a Thursday regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. BayStar itself invested the remaining $20 million.
BayStar invests in publicly traded companies with a mechanism called a PIPE--private investment in public equity. While Microsoft has used PIPEs in the past, a BayStar representative said Microsoft apparently hasn't ever participated in a BayStar PIPE and certainly didn't participate in the SCO investment.