SEA
Go-Jek is in talks to raise around $1.5 billion in a fresh funding round to fight against Grab, according to people familiar with the matter. (The Information)
Grab is looking to raise up to $350 million to finance a planned electric scooter service to complete its transport services ecosystem in Singapore, people familiar with the matter told KrASIA. (KrASIA)
Singapore-based CashShield, an online fraud management solutions provider, has raised a $20 million Series B round led by Temasek and GGV Capital. (e27)
JD-backed Pomelo Fashion, a Thai fashion e-commerce site, eyes to open its first micro-retail store in Singapore in a regional expansion push. (SCMP)
Thai politicians and businessmen are meeting with Foxconn and other companies in China to seek investment in Thailand to boost the digital transformation in the country. (SCMP)
HK-listed SEA plans to develop more games and offer financial services as the gaming and e-commerce company seeks to strengthen its ecosystem in the region. (SCMP)
China
Baidu and Ford Motor signed a formal Letter of Intent to cooperate in fields including AI, connectivity, and digital marketing. The automaker is likely to help Baidu in autonomous driving. (Technode)
China’s used car platform Uxin has downsized its US IPO size to $225 million. (PingWest)
Live-streaming platform Inke has a MAU of 25.25 million in Q1 2018, up 0.3% quarter on quarter, according to its updated prospectus. It has 729k paying users during the same period, up 11.8% quarter on quarter. (PingWest)
WeChat introduced 2 updates to allow open reproduction and tipping the original author of a reproduced article. (Technode)
Alibaba has surpassed IBM to become the fourth biggest cloud infrastructure provider in Q1 2018. The company is still behind Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. (CNBC)
China is poaching US talent, including top-caliber engineers, scientists, and other skilled technical workers. Silicon Valley is its top target. (WSJ)
Temasek-backed AI startup Rokid released three products including a portable smart speaker, an AI-specific SOC chip and an AR glasses. (CMN)
EV maker NIO’s VC arm has led an investment which is worth hundreds of millions of yuan in AIpark, a parking management system startup. (CMN)
Baidu has sued a former employee who joined Toutiao’s affiliate after his departure from the search giant for violating non-disclosure and non-compete agreements. (Technode)
Rest of Asia
Flipkart merged Billion brand with its private label business. Billion was a private label project of Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal. (LiveMint)
World
Sequoia Capital has raised $6 billion for its $8 billion global fund to take on SoftBank. The fund is the largest one to date in Silicon Valley. (BI)
Uber is granted with a probationary license to operate in London. (WSJ)
Gadgets
Amazon has updated its iOS Alexa app to enable a voice control feature which allows users to voice command the virtual assistant. (Gadgets360)
Good News Bad News
Elon Musk tweeted “we must preserve the light of consciousness by becoming a spacefaring civilization [and] extending life to other planets,”, as human civilization seems to be the only advanced civilization in the universe according to a study. (CNBC)
