Coatue, Ackman invest in trading-focused social network Commonstock

(Reuters) - Commonstock, a social network platform for retail investors, said on Tuesday it had raised $25 million in a funding round led by hedge fund Coatue and from others including billionaire investor Bill Ackman and Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel.

The company, which lets users on its platform copy each others' trades and discuss and rank investment strategies, did not disclose the valuation at which the funds were raised.

Venture investor Michael Ovitz, Upside Ventures and others also participated in the funding round for the company, backed by billionaire hedge fund manager Dan Loeb.

The company 's platform is targeted at retail investors, who have caused wild price swings in shares of so-called "meme stocks" such as GameStop Corp and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc this year by banding together on forums like Reddit's WallStreetBets.

"The era of memestocks has only underscored the need to separate signal from noise when it comes to retail investing," Commonstock founder and Chief Executive Officer David McDonough said in a statement.

The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2017 and officially launched in August 2020, also promises more transparency by requiring users to link their brokerage accounts to the platform, to verify the investments they post about are real.

(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

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