The Latest from Rita Liao
Animoca Brands’ Japan unit raises $45M at $500M valuation for NFT push
Asia’s crypto games and web3 investment powerhouse Animoca Brands is making inroads into Japan as its local unit picks up $45 million in financing at a $500 million pre-money valuation. The inve
Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster jazzes up China’s AR startup Nreal with $15M funding
Augmented reality headsets have been around for years, but none of the market players has really expanded beyond the techy demographic and broken into the mainstream. An AR startup hopes to change tha
Oppo stays ‘committed’ to Europe despite sales suspension in Germany
Chinese smartphone titan Oppo will keep Germany as its main operational hub for its European business despite recently withdrawing sales from the country, Billy Zhang, the firm’s vice president
Zilliz, the startup behind the Milvus open source vector database for AI apps, raises $60M, relocates to SF
In 2020, Chinese startup Zilliz — which builds cloud-native software to process data for AI applications and unstructured data analytics, and is the creator of Milvus, the popular open source ve
Ex-Apple engineer admits stealing automotive trade secrets
A case concerning Apple’s driving trade secrets which started in 2018 has come to a close. Xiaolang Zhang, a former Apple employee, pleaded guilty on Monday to stealing confidential information
Safeheron secures $7M to make private keys safer for crypto wallets
Crypto enthusiasts promise to build a decentralized money system that allows people to freely trade without any intermediary intervention. It’s a rosy picture, but recent events of security vuln
Otter.ai challenger Airgram raises $10M to transcribe and time your video calls
There’re plenty of tools out there competing to help people make their video calls breezier. Some, like voice transcription service Otter.ai, have been getting a boost from the COVID-19 pandemic
Tesla doesn’t need to hit the panic button over China heat wave disruptions just yet
Some parts of China are suffering from record high temperatures in the past few weeks, prompting local governments to halt industrial power use, including those of battery plants. When news reaches th
Eat Just bags $25M, gets Alibaba’s help to sell alternative protein in China
China is a notoriously difficult market for international startups to crack, but one company seems to have found the recipe for wooing the country’s picky consumers. Three years after Eat Just l
SoftBank, Sequoia China back this ERP startup enabling China’s online exporters
Thanks to cross-border e-commerce platforms, China continues to be a major exporter of consumer goods for the world in the online shopping age. It’s not just marketplaces like Amazon and AliExpr
Tencent veterans secure $13M to build cross-chain decentralized identities
There are many startups working on decentralized identities for the next generation of the internet. Four Tencent veterans want their offering .bit, an identity protocol built on the blockchain, to be
Aramco’s Prosperity7 powers AI drug firm Insilico’s $95M round
Hong Kong-based drug discovery and development company Insilico has secured fresh capital at a time that its CEO described as a “biotech winter.” The firm has raised $35 million on the hee
SoftBank to trim Alibaba stake to 14.6%, poised to book $34B gain
Masayoshi Son famously built his war chest by pumping $20 million into Alibaba two decades ago. Over the years the Chinese e-commerce behemoth has become a way for the billionaire founder of SoftBank
TikTok parent ByteDance just bought a hospital group in China
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is making some pretty heavy bets on the healthcare space as it acquired Amcare, which runs high-end children’s and women’s hospitals across China. T
Bitmain co-founder welcomes crypto regulation to restore market confidence
The collapse of Three Arrow Capital and the counterparties wrapped in the crypto hedge fund’s troubles have drawn questions about the soundness of the heady digital asset investment space. For t
Toyota-backed robotaxi unicorn Pony.ai sues ex-employees over trade secrets
Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company valued at $8.5 billion as of late, has sued two former employees over alleged trade secret infringement. The lawsuit is arriving months after Frank (Zhenh
Salesforce shutters Hong Kong office, leans on Alibaba in China
Salesforce is repositioning itself in China as it looks to expand the reach of its customer relationship management software in the country. The company is “accelerating” its strategic par
Thousands of Solana wallets drained in multimillion-dollar exploit
Solana, an increasingly popular blockchain known for its speedy transactions, has become the target of the crypto sphere’s latest hack after users reported that funds have been drained from int
a16z-backed Shein challenger Cider is growing rapidly
Shein has shown the world how combining social media marketing, data analytics and China’s well-oiled supply chain has created a $100 billion fast-fashion behemoth. Its success naturally spawns
Gaming vets promise to make blockchain games fun and sustainable
The runaway success of Axie Infinity and StepN has convinced a flurry of entrepreneurs that web3 gaming, where the ownership of in-game assets is in the hands of users via blockchain adoption rather t