Chinaccelerator Daily Digest 10/31

Overseas:

1. Waymo gets first California OK for driverless testing without backup driver

2. British app bank Monzo hits unicorn status after latest fund raising

3. Coinbase valued at $8 billion in latest fundraising round

4. Brex has partnered with WeWork, AWS and more for its new rewards program

5. U.S. restricts exports to Chinese semiconductor firm Fujian Jinhua

6. Facebook daily users down in Europe, flat in North America, but revenue keeps rising

7. Content delivery network and cloud service provider Akamai soars 17% after earnings beat, and CEO touts record gaming traffic due to Fortnite

8. PayPal rival Adyen expands to Canada and picks up new customers including Adidas, Dollar Shave Club

9. Google, Accel and Jay Z invest in life insurance start-up Ethos, valuing it at more than $100 million

10. Samsung third-quarter profit rises 21 percent, in line with guidance

11. Nearly half of UK firms think their business models won’t exist in 5 years because of A.I., study says

12. eBay shares rise after earnings beat

13. Valued at $500M, investors say HeadSpin is ‘one of the fastest-scaling software companies’ ever

14. Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank, raises £85M Series E at a £1B pre-money valuation

15. Even Financial acquires Birch Finance, a credit card rewards startup

16. Emotional wellness startup Aura raises $2.7 million from Cowboy Ventures and Reach Capital

17. Cockroach Labs launches open source SQL database CockroachDB as managed service

18. Freebird flies off with $8M to rescue passengers after flight cancellations

19. Sentieo raises $19M to be the AI-powered Bloomberg Terminal

20. ZypMedia raises $5.6M to help traditional media companies embrace online ads

China:

1. China’s Baidu forecasts sales drop as regulation, trade fears bite

2. JD.com apologises for sexist marketing campaign as Singles’ Day shopping event nears

3. Alibaba just opened the first hotel FlyZoo Hotel in Hangzhou which has robot guide and facial recognition functions.

4. Baidu is restarting the e-commerce project 

5. Shanshan 闪闪, the new retail service provider in parenting industry, raised 7-digit RMB investment in A3 round.

6. KaDa story (KaDa故事) , the digital content platform for children, raised 8-digit RMB in A+ round.

7. Kwai快手 launched the intelligent marketing platform

Blockchain:

Shariah-compliant crypto exchange to launch in 2019

Emerging Market:

Fintech startup Akulaku secures US$70M Series C funding

Cover picture credits from Reuters.