Overseas:
1. Brandless introduces a $9 price point with the launch of baby and pet products
2. Two years after being acquired by Cisco, AppDynamics keeps expanding monitoring vision
3. Adobe acquires Allegorithmic, makers of the Substance texture tools
4. Facebook agrees to do more to tackle scam ads after celebrity defamation lawsuit
5. Hulu drops the price for its streaming service to $6 per month, but raises prices for Live TV
6. Epic Games buys 3Lateral, maker of super-realistic ‘digital humans’
7. Open-source leader Confluent raises $125M on $2.5B valuation
8. Amazon is piloting its own delivery robot
9. Facebook may proactively close Pages and Groups before they’re in violation of policy
10. Aibo learns to be a better watchdog
11. Verizon Media Group is laying off 7 percent of its workforce
12. Twitter testing ‘Original Tweeter’ tag to distinguish who started a thread
13. Buzzfeed will cut its staff by 15% in major round of layoffs
14. AWS launches WorkLink to make accessing mobile intranet sites and web apps easier
15. Lumigo scores $8M seed to help manage serverless operations
16. Desktop Metal just raised another $160 million
17. Electric, the startup that automates IT, raises $25 million from GGV
18. Wag founders ditch dogs for bikes with $37 million in funding
19. Uplift raises $123M to bring flexible payments to the travel industry
20. Sherpa, a Spanish voice assistant, expands Series A to $15M as it passes 5M users
China:
1. China’s Tourists Made Third of Payments on Mobile When Overseas Last Year
2. Microsoft confirms Bing is down in China
3. China’s Mobike will rename as Meituan Bike as its parent takes the wheel
4. Online vendors in China are going crazy over a Peppa Pig meme
5. Tencent May Have Blocked TikTok on WeChat in China
6. Huawei Wades Into the China Fray With Its First Smart TV
7. Foxconn Denies Layoff Rumors, Says It Plans to Hire 50,000 in First Quarter
8. NetEase Cloud Music(网易云音乐) response works authorization question
Mobile:
1. Microsoft Edge on mobile now includes a built-in fake news detector
2. Behold, a smartphone devoid of buttons and ports
Emerging Market:
1. Grooves gets US$920K to connect Southeast Asians with jobs opportunities in Japan
2. Carousell and Go-Jek team up in Singapore
3. Google initiates first renewable energy project in Asia
4. Singapore-based fintech Credit Culture raises US$29.5M funding from RCE Capital Berhad
5. Indonesian legaltech startup Justika raises pre-Series A funding by top law firm
6. Smart lock maker Igloohome partners with insurance giant Allianz
Cover picture credits from TechCrunch