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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 Fund, Trustbridge 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
.
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
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
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
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.
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