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Deals
SoFi is reportedly close to completing a $500m funding round backed by existing investor SoftBank.
Speaking of SoftBank, editor-in-chief James Mawson has taken a deep look at its $3.3bn acquisition of Fortress Investment Group a week ago.
Internet group Baidu has invested $300m in iQiyi, an online video streaming platform in which it is majority shareholder, as part of a convertible note round sized at $1.53bn, that will support the company’s subscription service.
Indian e-commerce company Flipkart could be in line for a $1.5bn round of its own, having reportedly entered talks with a host of investors including Microsoft, Tencent, eBay, PayPal and Alphabet.
Mobike has been operating its bike rental network less than a year but has already raised well over $400m, $300m of which has come this year.
Having made investments in India-based Paytm and Thailand-based Ascend Money in the past few months, Chinese financial services provider Ant Financial is moving into Korea.
China-based mobile game publisher Shinezone Network has secured $58m in series B funding that will be used to build out its international distribution and homegrown incubator activities.
Chinese peer-to-peer car sharing platform Atzuche has secured $58m in a series C round that included existing backers Hearst Media and China Pacific Insurance.
Cloud services provider Rackspace has spun out Mailgun, the email automation tools provider it acquired in 2012.
Media group Bennett, Coleman & Co has invested $38.8m in India-based e-commerce firm Flipkart, providing both capital and advertising services.
GV-backed microfinance provider Tala has raised $30m in an IVP-led series B round that took its overall funding to $44m.
Anxin Doctor, the developer of an app that connects users to medical specialists such as paediatricians, gynaecologists and obstetrics doctors, has raised $28m in funding.
On GlobalGovernmentVenturing.com, IDS Medical Systems Group, an Indonesia-based medical device supplier, is set to receive up to $60m from International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector-focused arm of multilateral financial institution World Bank, DealStreetAsia wrote yesterday.
We’ve also had a nice cross-over piece of news from Finland, where TactoTek, a three-dimensional moulded plastic electronics manufacturer, has increased its total funding to more than $20m following a round that featured Faurecia Ventures, the investment arm of automotive parts maker Faurecia.
And another cross-over: on GlobalUniversityVenturing.com, C3Nano, a spinout of Stanford University that produces conductive inks and films for bendable touch sensors, closed a $15m series D round co-led by GSR Ventures, conglomerate Nissha Printing and diversified holding group Xinjiang Guoli Minsheng Equity Investment.
Funds
Artificial intelligence was one of the cutting edge technologies on the menu when Samsung launched its $150m Next fund last month, but reports coming out of Korea suggest the company is considering the formation of a $1bn fund that will focus exclusively on AI.
Meituan-Dianping, the Chinese local services operator formed by a $15bn merger in late 2015, is set to join rivals in the online services sector by forming a dedicated corporate venturing fund, for which it aims to raise approximately $435m.
Project A, a Germany-based venture capital firm, closed a €140m ($148m) early-stage fund today with a cornerstone investment from the European Investment Fund (EIF), the EU-owned financing agency.
BioMedPartners, a Switzerland-based healthcare-focused venture capital firm, has achieved the first close of its BioMedInvest III fund at SFr75m ($75m) with a cornerstone investment from the European Investment Fund (EIF).
The biggest fund on GGV came from Singapore, where Heliconia Capital Management, a wholly-owned investment subsidiary of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, has announced a S$600m ($422m) fund.
EduGrowth, a non-profit platform founded by Deakin University, La Trobe University, Monash University, Charles Sturt University and Griffith University as well as education company Navitas, has launched an accelerator, that will put A$50,000 into participating startups in return for 6% equity stake.
Exits
Zawatt, a Japan-based operator of an online auction platform, is set to be acquired by marketplace app provider Mercari today (that is February 27, for those of you listening to this later in the week).
Zhenai, a China-based online dating platform backed by internet company IAC, is planning a listing via a reverse merger with aircraft parts manufacturer DEA General Aviation, China Money Network has reported.
US-based software integration technology provider MuleSoft has filed to raise $100m in an initial public offering that will give exits to networking technology producer Cisco and enterprise software firms Salesforce.com and ServiceNow.
Here’s some rather depressing news for investors: Groupon has revealed in a securities filing that it paid the grand total of zero for corporate-backed competitor Living Social when it acquired the company in October 2016.
On GlobalUniversityVenturing.com meanwhile, Wrapidity, an artificial intelligence (AI) spinout of Oxford University, was acquired by data science company Meltwater.
“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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