Chinaccelerator Daily Digest 1/17/2019

Overseas:

1. Facebook urged to give users greater control over what they see

2. Google raises its G Suite prices

3. Ford’s iconic F-Series trucks are going electric

4. Resolute Ventures sticks to its knitting with $75 million fourth fund

5. Infor lands $1.5 billion investment ahead of IPO

6. Facebook poaches Google’s AR/VR engineering lead to take over Portal team

7. TV broadcaster Sinclair launches STIRR, a free streaming service with local news and sports

8. Email security company Tessian is closing in on a $40M round led by Sequoia Capital

9. Nvidia’s T4 GPUs are now available in beta on Google Cloud

10. Techstars will build and launch startups with new venture studio

11. Apple expands its reach with free Apple Music on Verizon Wireless

12. BeMyEye acquires Streetbee, a Russian crowdsourcing and image recognition provider

13. YouTube will ‘ramp up’ enforcement of its policies against dangerous challenges and pranks

14. Driving down the cost of preserving genetic material, Acorn Biolabs raises $3.3 million

15. Byju’s buys Osmo for $120M to add blended learning to its $4B digital education business

16. Niantic finalizes its Series C at $245M with a valuation of nearly $4B (the company behind Pokémon GO and the soon to be released Harry Potter Wizards Unite)

17. HyperScience, the machine learning startup tackling data entry, raises $30 million Series B

18. Consolidation is coming to gaming, and Jam City raises $145 million to capitalize on it

19. Doctolib details how telemedicine appointments work

China:

1. US will reportedly seek criminal case against Huawei for stealing tech secrets

2. MaoYanYuLe(猫眼娱乐) opening valuation range will be adjusted to 15-17 billion next week

3. Didi hints at next security upgrade: real-name verification for passengers 

4. Toutiao are reassured to buy TikTok

5. TikTok owner barely meets 2018 target amid slowdown in China advertising

6. Anonymous chat app in China draws attention for founder’s identity

7. With a focus on independent games, BlazeFire(野火科技) gets electricity soul venture capital millions of angel round financing

8. Moredian(魔点科技) Completes 60 Million Yuan Pre-B Round Financing

Mobile:

1. Sprint customers can now use Apple Business Chat to reach an agent

2. Tinder is testing the ability to share Spotify music clips in chat

3. China accounted for nearly half of app downloads in 2018, 40% of consumer spend

Emerging Market:

1. Instamojo raises $7M to help SMEs and ‘micro-entrepreneurs’ in India sell online

2. Indonesia’s online bill payments Sepulsa rebrands into Alterra

3. Filipino startups are blooming, but still face key issues, says VC

4. Healthy growth for Malaysian ecommerce firm as it completes series A fundraising

5. India insurtech firm raises $25m from Sequoia India, others

Cover picture credits from TechCrunch