Columbus Nova Technology Partners and Gawker Media

Gawker.com Lifehacker: A source close to USM said the deal was worth several tens of millions of dollars, according to The Moscow Times. Meanwhile, media reports announced the sale of a minority stake in Gawker Media — a New York-based network of seven 'new media' websites including Gawker.com and Lifehacker — to Columbus Nova Technology Partners, the U.S. investment arm of oil and metal conglomerate Renova Group, owned by Viktor Vekselberg. USM Holdings, a company controlled by metals and mobile technology magnate Alisher Usmanov, has invested in Uber, the fast-growing taxi service, a spokesperson confirmed to The Moscow Times. Then, an executive at Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a startup working on a super high-speed futuristic train — the brainchild of Elon Musk — told The Moscow Times that the company was talking to a Russian private investor and the Russian government about building a line of the train in the country. News of the investments came after German Gref, the head of state-owned lender Sberbank, gave a speech in which he said Russia had fallen into a category of "downshifter" countries that had failed to adapt to economic and technological change. Hyperloop Technologies, a rival company also working on the project, said their executives would also be traveling to Moscow in early February. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.