Chinaccelerator Daily Digest 2019/8/29

Overseas:

1. ThoughtSpot, founded by ex-Googlers, hauls in US$248M Series E on $1.95B valuation

2. Mews Systems raises US$33 million for hotel and hostel property management tools

3. Switzerland-based Bestmile raises US$16.5 million to manage human and AI-driven fleets

4. Berlin-based Inkitt raises US$16M led by Kleiner Perkins to publish crowdsourced novels in ‘mini-episodes’

5. Orbion raises US$9.2M to mass-produce plasma thrusters for small satellites

6. San Francisco-based ReadMe scores US$9M Series A to help firms customize API docs

7. US-based CodeCombat raises US$6 million to teach coding through immersive games

8. Mythic Markets just raised US$2 million in seed to build a fractional ownership market for rare collectibles

9. US-based autonomous air transport startup Elroy Air completes first flights of large cargo VTOL

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China:

1. China’s AI infrastructure market expected to exceed US$8 billion by 2023 according to report by IDC and Inspur 浪潮

2. Shanghai sets up RMB 500 million fund to attract drone makers to the city

3. Tencent and People’s Bank of China jointly created first financial education WeChat mini-game to promote financial knowledge

4. Ant Financial’s Sesame Credit 芝麻信用 and wkzuche.com 悟空租车 launched a full range of car rental services

5. Weibo’s monthly active users grew to 486 million in Q2 2019, a net addition of around 55M users YoY

6. Tencent invests US$125M in Chinese online comic platform Kuaikan World 快看漫画

7. Hanweb 大汉软件, a technology service provider for the government, received strategic investment by Ant Financial 蚂蚁金服

8. Cortp.com 箱箱共用, Chinese shared shipping box startup, raised 8-digit RMB in Series C 

9. Grindoctor 古兰丁, industry internet solution for auto and aerospace, completed 7-digit RMB Pre-A funding round

Cross-Border:

1. Amazon in talks for stake in Indonesia’s ride-hailing startup GOJEK

2. Australian graphic-design tool unicorn Canva targets China, India and Brazil as key growth markets

Emerging Market:

1. Grab promises to invest US$500 million into Vietnam

2. Indian B2B fintech startup Recko raises additional seed round to fuel international expansion

3. Indian fintech unicorn Paytm enters healthcare space in diversification efforts

4. Indian subscription management startup Chargebee raises US$14m led by Steadview

Image Credits: greenmangaming.com