Chinaccelerator Daily Digest 11/9

Overseas:

1. Electric flying taxi service Lilium poaches key hires from Audi, Airbus

2. Walmart is building an AI lab inside one of its store

3. Dell may change up $22B plan to go public again

4. National Grid unveils $250M corporate venture capital arm

5. Vine co-founder plans to launch successor Byte in Spring 2019 

6. Facebook removed 14 million pieces of terrorist content this year, and the numbers are rising 

7. Chrome adds new security features to stop mobile subscription scams 

8. 81% of VC firms don’t have a single black investor — BLCK VC wants to change that

9. Material Impact, a new fund focused on materials technology, just closed its debut fund with $110 million

10. Self-driving Mercedes-Benz S Class sedans are coming to San Jose

11. Amazon launches Alexa app for Windows 10 PCs

12. Japan is cracking down on SoftBank’s revenue

13. Bonobo AI raises $4.5M seed round to help companies turn interactions with customers into valuable data

14. Spotify debuts an analytics service for music publishers 

China:

1. Alibaba’s on-demand online services unit valued at $30 billion: sources 

2. Briefing: Tencent Cuts Marketing Budget for Games Amid Crackdown

3. Self-driving taxi service launches in China (but only for two hours a day)

4. Tencent might develop a VR version of WeChat

5. Didi (滴滴) announces new progress in rectification: 12-city users can SMS alarms

6. Douyin claims to have 400 million monthly active users in China 

7. Xinchao Media Group(新潮传媒集) won Baidu Investment

8. Xiaoyuan Technology C(小源科技C)+ Wheel wins Unicom Innovation Fund Investment(轮获联通创新基金)

Cross-border:

1. LightInTheBox Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Leading Southeast Asian Cross-Border E-commerce Platform Ezbuy 

2. Netflix to expand audience across Asia, focus on India not China

Blockchain:

Three challenges facing blockchain technology

Mobile:

1. Sony’s new noise-canceling headphones are great traveling companions

2. Samsung’s One UI for the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9 unveiled

Emerging Market:

1. China’s brightest children are being recruited to develop AI ‘killer bots’

2. Clik secured US$2M seed funding, soon to launch in Cambodia 

Cover picture credits from TechCrunch