Twitter's $70mn SoundCloud investment goes awry

San Francisco, Feb 24 (IANS) Twitter has lost almost all of the $70 million money it had invested in music streaming platform SoundCloud, the company said in its 2017 annual report.

According to the filing, the company had to write off a total of $66.4 million of the $70 million it had invested into Soundcloud as part of a $100 million round of funding in June 2016, tech website Variety reported late on Friday.

SoundCloud ran out of money in early 2017 but soon secured a deal of $170 million of new funding from US-based financial institution Raine Group and Singapore's Temasek in August 2017.

The deal came with a corporate restructure, according to which many of the start-up's early investors, including SoundCloud's founding CEO Alexander Ljung, were removed.

Twitter was one of the investors who were on the losing side of that deal. 

The report does not mention SoundCloud by name but said that "the investee (completed) a financing with third parties and reorganisation".

SoundCloud was reportedly valued $700 million when Twitter invested in it. Before receiving the investment from Raine and Temasek that value had plunged to $150 million. 

Twitter acknowledged its annual report that "the carrying value of this investment was not expected to be recoverable within a reasonable period of time".