TAYLOR SWIFT JOINS $2.8m SEED ROUND FOR CHARACTERX
▶ Dwayne Johnson earns $491,000 in royalties from WWE and Lindsay Lohan receives $500,000 for her cameo in new ‘Mean Girls’ movie,
Taylor Swift
American singer and songwriter Taylor Swift has participated in a $2.8 million seed funding round in CharacterX, a San Francisco-based social media network that allows users to create and interact with virtual characters, according to investor database Crunchbase.
The amount invested by Swift was not disclosed. Lightspeed Venture Partners, INCE Capital and Spark Digital Capital were the lead investors in the round.
CharacterX blends artificial intelligence with blockchain to change the social media networking landscape, the company said.
The team recently launched CharacterX’s mobile apps for both Android and iOS, alongside a developer website, for users to “create and build deep emotional attachment with AI beings”, it added.
Swift, 33, is one of the world’s richest self-made women with a net worth of $1.1 billion, according to Forbes. She was also named Time magazine’s 2023 person of the year.
The singer has primarily earned her fortune from her successful music career, which she began at the age of 16 with her self-titled debut album.
Her 10 studio albums have sold millions of copies, both physical and digital, according to Investopedia. She entered the exclusive $1 billion club last October on the back of her 146-date Eras concert tour, which has set several records and sparked ticket frenzies.
Swift is one of the few artists to reach billionaire status from music and performing alone, Bloomberg reported.
Swift started her 53-date tour around the US in March 2023 and earned about $10 million to $13 million for each concert, according to Forbes.
The 12-time Grammy winner could have earned an estimated $4.1 billion from the tour based on her share of 85 per cent, The
Washington Post reported. Swift owns properties worth more than $150 million in the US, according to wealth-tracking website Celebrity Net Worth.
She has four homes in New York City, including apartments in the West Village and Tribeca, a beach house on Rhode Island, a seven-bedroom home in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, properties in Nashville, Tennessee, and an estate in Beverly Hills.
Swift also owns two Dassault private jets and has a notable car collection.
She also makes millions of dollars every year from endorsements with brands such as Diet Coke, AT&T, Target, Sony and CoverGirl.
She was set to earn more than $130 million in royalties from Spotify after taking the top spot as the most streamed artist on the platform’s end-ofyear Wrapped list in 2023.
Dwayne Johnson
Dwayne Johnson, the former WWE wrestler known as “The Rock”, earned $491,000 in royalty payments from the company last year, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. TKO Group Holdings, the company that was created after parent organisation Endeavor merged the UFC and WWE, also announced in the filing that Johnson has been added to its board of directors.
As a board member, he will continue to earn royalties from revenue generated by licensing his name and likeness in future years.
Johnson, 51, will also receive restricted stock awards of up to $30 million and the trademark rights to his nickname, “The Rock”, which had been owned by the WWE since 2000, the filing said.
“I get a chance to sit at the table that my grandfather and dad helped to build,” Johnson said. “The name, The Rock, I owe that name everything. Without that name, there’d be no wrestling career, there’d be no Hollywood career.”
Johnson, a 10-time world champion, retired from fulltime wrestling in 2004 but has made some sporadic appearances over the years.
He made his movie debut in 2001 with The Mummy Returns and has since appeared in nearly 50 movies.
His films have grossed more than $13 billion, according to online database The Numbers.
In 2012, he founded film production company Seven Bucks Productions.
The company’s name is a reference to a bleak time in his life when he was removed from a Canadian football team and ended up living in Florida with $7 to his name, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
The production company has released movies including Shazam!, Black Adam and two films in the Jumanji franchise.
California-born Johnson’s net worth is estimated at $800 million. His stake in Teremana, the beverage brand he created, accounts for the biggest share of his wealth. The brand, which sells one million cases each year, is worth several billion dollars, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He has or has had partnership and endorsement deals with Apple, Ford and Under Armour.
Johnson is one of the highest-paid entertainers. In a typical year, he earns at least $100 million from his various film and endorsement endeavours.
Thanks to his massive social media following, Johnson contractually demands as much as $4 million just to promote his own movies. That’s on top of salary and back-end points, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
Johnson has co-founded multiple business ventures, including ZOA Energy, an energy drink company, in partnership with Molson Coors, the SEC filing said.
In 2020, he co-led a consortium to acquire the XFL, a professional American football league, which relaunched in 2023 and recently combined with the USFL to become the United Football League.
Jannik Sinner
Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner’s net worth has jumped to about $15 million after winning the Australian Open last weekend, according to online platform Sportskeeda.
The 22-year-old pocketed $2.08 million for his first major win, increasing his total prize money to $20 million since he turned professional in 2018, Italian newspaper
Money. IT reported. Sinner beat Russian Daniil Medvedev in the final and also handed Novak Djokovic his first loss at Melbourne Park in six years in the semi-final. No Italian man had won a Grand Slam singles title in nearly half a century – since Adriano Panatta raised the French Open trophy in 1976.
The bulk of Sinner’s wealth comes from his success on the court, with prize money hauls earned from reaching the quarter finals of the French Open and US Open, as well as the semi-finals of Wimbledon last year.
Sinner also earns about €25 million ($27 million) a year from an array of sponsors led by Nike, AP reported, quoting the Gazzetta newspaper
In 2022, he signed a $150 million 10-year contract with Nike. His other sponsors include Head, Gucci, Lavazza, Rolex, Alfa Romeo and Parmigiano Reggiano, according to Associated Press.
“My goal isn’t to make money; it’s to become the best version of me,” he said in a November interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Lindsay Lohan
Dubai-based actress Lindsay Lohan made $500,000 for her cameo in the new Mean Girls movie, according to Variety magazine. Lohan, 37, who starred in the original 2004 Mean Girls film, earned the amount for a half a day of work in the latest incarnation, an adaptation of the Broadway musical that ran from 2018 to 2020, Variety said.
She made $1 million to star in the original release, Celebrity Net Worth reported.
The Freaky Friday actress took more than a decade’s break from films before returning to the screen with the Netflix romantic comedy
Falling for Christmas in 2022. She is set to return to the streaming platform in another romcom Irish Wish in March.
The Parent Trap star gave birth to her first child last year in Dubai, where she lives with her Kuwaiti financier husband Bader Shammas. Lohan moved to Dubai in 2014 after first visiting in 2008 for the opening of Atlantis, The Palm.
She has an estimated net worth of $2 million.
Lohan has modelled for Miu Miu, Fornarina and Jill Stuart, among others, and has released her own brand of leggings and a self-tanning spray.
In 2014, the actress released a free-to-play mobile game called Lindsay Lohan’s The Price of Fame, and in 2017, she launched a lifestyle site called Preemium.
The premiere of her podcast, The Lohdown with Lindsay
Lohan, was aired in April 2022. She currently serves as the director of design at Vigme, a New York-based e-commerce shopping community, according to Crunchbase.