Chinese tech mogul Alibaba hit the headline today by showing its ambition in AI. Injecting $227 million investment in AI unicorn startup SenseTime, Alibaba made the biggest investment ever in the field of AI. At the same time, Sesame Credit, a social credit scoring platform developed by the company’s affiliate Ant Financial, pushes China to go deposit free.
Southeast Asia:
Indonesia: Go-Jek reported to have bought minority stake in Bangladesh motorbike ride-hailing startup Pathao, investing about $2 million in the company’s Series A round. Through this deal, Go-Jek will get an insight into the Bangladeshi market which is one of the most populated and untapped markets. (DealStreetAsia)
Uber is to allow Vietnamese users to pay for their trips using local mobile wallet MoMo. This move aims at serving millions of users in the country who don’t have credit or debit cards. MoMo has five million users who use the mobile wallet to pay for bills, airline tickets, and many other services. This move comes as Uber’s local rivals Grab and Go-Jek seeks adoption of their own in-app digital payment platforms. (Bloomberg)
Vietnam: Swedish-Vietnamese IT service provider Fram Skandinavien AB has decided to acquire 95 percent stake in Carmudi Vietnam, a Rocket Internet-backed Vietnamese company for car classifieds sites. Through the deal, Fram will be able to use Carmudi brand identity in Vietnam and conduct marketplace-based e-commerce in the country. ( DealStreetAsia )
Singapore: Fatfish Internet Group, the Singapore-based startup investment company, has agreed to invest $1 million in Kryptos-X, a yet-to-be-launched online cryptocurrency marketplace in Singapore. Kryptos-X will firstly be open to Singapore citizens and residents intact with the regulatory framework. (e27)
Singapore: Addvalue Technologies, the satellite-based communication terminals and solutions provider, is seeking the potential spin-off of its affiliate Addvalue Solutions on the SGX Catalist. The firm is also exploring a transfer to the Catalist board after the introduction of a rule setting the price threshold for Mainboard-listed companies at 20 Singapore cents. (DealStreetAsia)
SE Asia: Temasek plans to sell its 20 percent stake in Zuellig Pharma, a leading healthcare distribution in Asia. The Singapore state investment firm seeks around $1 billion from the deal. (DealStreetAsia)
China:
Alibaba agreed to invest around $227 million in Chinese deep learning unicorn startup SenseTime. The investment is the biggest one so far in the field of AI. The leading tech startup has just closed a Series B funding round worth $410 million in July. Qualcomm has also injected tens of millions of dollars strategic investment in the startup. (Caijing)
Sesame Credit, the social credit scoring system developed by Alibaba’s affiliate Ant Financial, has reached strategic partnership with Chinese bike-sharing startup Hellobike, allowing users in ten Chinese cities to use the bike-sharing service without paying a deposit. Sesame Credit announced a week ago its $ 151 million investment plan to push China to go deposit free. (36Kr)
Shares of RYB Education surged 23 percent after allegations of child sexual abuse was reported to be false. Investigations by the Chinese police showed a teacher has used sewing needles to punish some children, while speculations that children were suffering from sexual abuse and misuse of pills were proven to be made up by parents. (wallstreetcn)
Beijing Internet Financial Industry Association (BJIFIA) urged member companies to self-regulate on interest rate and loan situation. (21jingji)
Tencent’s game platform Wegame is to launch the hit game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which is pricing at approximately $15, the same with the price on Steam. Players using Steam account can still play the game and make transactions on the platform, but no new registration on Steam is available. (news.mydrivers)
The speculation on the merger between Mobike and ofo never stops. Zhu Xiaohu, Chinese VC fund GSR Ventures’ Manager Director, claimed the merger is the best choice for the two bike-sharing companies. Mobike commented that the company is not interested in the merger which is unnecessary in nature. (ep.ycwb)
JD and Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) rolled out a research plan around machine learning, deep learning, robotics, natural language processing and computer vision. （36Kr）
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun announced the company’s achievement in its IoT platform at the Xiaomi conference of IoT developers. So far, over 85 million hardware have been connected to Xiaomi IoT platform while the number of daily active devices surpass 10 million. Baidu COO Lu Qi showed up and announced Baidu and Xiaomi have reached partnership in developing IoT. (36Kr)
Chinese sharing power bank startup Volt+ (伏特+) has closed a Series A funding round worth around $45 million. The startup has already put more than 10 000 power banks in 95 Chinese cities and achieved breakeven. （PencilNews）
World:
Tesla is believed to benefit the most from the rise in electric vehicles, according to UBS global auto survey. By 2025, almost every sixth car sold will be electric and the global sale of electric vehicles should hit 16.5 million. Established automakers like BMW are pouring billions in the competition with newer companies like Tesla. (Bloomberg)
Faraday & Future, the California-based electric vehicle startup backed by Jia Yueting, struggles to raise $500 million through a funding round. Jia, the founder of Netflix-like LeEco, wanted to challenge Tesla by combining Chinese cash with Western technology skills. Now, Faraday needs the additional cash if it is to produce actual cars instead of prototypes, while mainland regulators won’t allow transfer of money out of the country. (Bloomberg)
Delhi-based Paytm Payments Bank seeks to become the largest digital bank in the world with its 500 million bank accounts. It aims to provide integrated financial services ranging from wealth management to share trading. Paytm’s parent company One97 Communications is backed by Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Financial among others. (Bloomberg)
WeWork, a U.S.-based company providing shared workplace, agreed to buy Meetup, an online social network platform. WeWork has made several acquisitions this year, wishing to grow revenue and justify its almost $20 billion valuation. (Bloomberg)
Bitcoin barrels to $10,000 thanks to investor enthusiasm despite concerns about a cryptocurrency bubble. The technical analysis said Bitcoin has been oversold for two years. (Bloomberg)
