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Dragon Power

Dragon Power:

Toutiao Set To Score $2 Billion
Douban Heads For Overseas IPO
Tencent Inks 2 More U.S. Deals

Toutiao, an innovative news aggregator that relies on data mining to deliver a personalized news feed, is set to score approximately $2 billion at a valuation north of $20 billion, led by  General Atlantic.
New capital for the supercharged Toutiao is on top of a $1 billion round led by  Sequoia Capital China and  CCB International in April at an $11 billion valuation. Toutiao has started investing abroad and is labeled as one of the next-gen China powers after the BAT. 
Douban , a popular Chinese social networking service with movie and book reviews, is making plans to go public overseas (no clue where yet). Douban, which has struggled to reach profitability, last raised funds in 2011, when  Bertelsmann Asia Investment FundTrustbridge Partners and  Sequoia Capital  invested $50 million in a Series C. The startup's earliest backer is  Ceyuan Ventures -  $2 million in 2006 followed by $7 million in 2010.
Tencent  is behind a $300 million funding of smartphone startup  Essential , founded by Android co-creator Andy Rubin.  And,  Tencent  joined a $50 million, Series A funding of Karius, a Redwood City-based life sciences company, with co-leads Lightspeed Venture Partners and venture fund  Data Collective. 
In the U.K., Tencent made a strategic investment of $23 million into game developer  Frontier Developments.
China's bike sharing unicorn startup  Ofo  is partnering with  Softbank  to enter Japan as talks continue over a $1 billion new investment led by Softbank. The fast-expanding Ofo, is backed with $1 billion by Alibaba, Didi Chuxing and DST Global .
 
More deal news here: SiliconDragonVentures.com 


FUNDS
Chinese Internet portal Sina Corp. is forming a $500 million VC fund to invest in Chinese fintech companies in insurance and wealth management areas. Sina's jump into finance lags behind the majors: Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu.
M&A / Partnerships
Drone maker DJI is teaming up with its former competitor 3DR, an American drone start-up, to launch an enterprise drone platform. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army is banning use of the Chinese-made DJI drones from its units, citing "cyber vulnerabilities."
INDIA
  Flipkart's $2.5 billion deal from Japan's tech investor Softbank deal signals a new era for Indian startups that are increasingly attracting foreign investment. The deal comes just a few months after a $1.4 billion investment by Tencent, eBay and Microsoft in Flipkart.
Read 
Forbes,
Flipped Out 
NOTEWORTHY
China VC fund Hone Capital  relies on machine learning to pick best investments in U.S. startups.
Read Forbes,
Hone In 
 
How Baidu will win China's AI race: and maybe the world's, based on an interview by Wired with COO Qi Lu.
Xiaomi is once again world's biggest smartphone brand, but could it go further?    Forbes 
Zuck at Great Wall
Facebook is trying a different way into China after years of being blocked, by releasing in stealth (no longer, thanks to the   NYT!) a new local app that is a lot like Moments and is cleverly disguised as Colorful Balloons.
Beijing-based VR film startup  Sandman Studios  highlighted the potential of VR content when its sci-fi animation clip Free Whale scored as one of the finalists in the Venice International Film Festival, in the first-ever VR competition for films. The competition featured 22 films from around the world, three of them from mainland China.
  
RECAP: Silicon Dragon LA 2017
China-Hollywood panel

Don't look for China-Hollywood deals to resume soon. The love affair is clearly off, impacted by capital that did not show up and deals that did not go through.
Read Forbes: Lost Connection #silicondragon
See Silicon Dragon LA 2017 panelists, above.