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Key trends we observed 📊
A total of 99 investments were made during the week of October 1–8. Enterprise services and healthcare maintain a strong lead ahead of other industries with a combined 42 deals closed. Later stage (C+ Series and further), as well as strategic investments, see an increase in activity.
Top Stories: VCs and investments 📖📚
Pony.ai’s Series C is particularly notable amongst the pool of big ticket investments, bagging USD 267 million from investors. Pony.ai announced its strategic partnership, and investment, with state-owned FAW Group earlier this month, to explore pre-assembly production and institutionalize business operations for Level 4 autonomous driving systems.
Going Public—Top IPOs of the week 📈📉
Kuaishou Technology
Estimated valuation USD 28.0 billion
IPO filed on November 5
On November 5, Kuaishou Technology officially submitted its IPO prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The world’s second-largest video sharing platform (in terms of active users), and TikTok competitor, continues the march by Chinese companies to tap into capital in the renowned financial hub.
Kuaishou was officially founded in March 2011 with its roots in “GIF Kuaishou,” a mobile phone application for making and sharing GIF pictures. It is now undeniably one of the giants in the field of short videos. The company’s monthly active users topped 776 million, with around 1 billion live streams hosted on its app and a total of 1.63 trillion likes, shares, and comments on the platform.
Kuaishou’s revenue for 2019 was recorded at RMB 39.1 billion. The company went on to produce a year-on-year increase of 48% within the first six months of 2020.
Startups on our watchlist 📢
Hi-Tech
DEEPerception (深浅优视); Founded in 2019, Angel investment +
DEEPerception, a 3D industrial camera developer, raised tens of millions in RMB through angel investment. DEEPerception had also raised a similar amount in March, from Xiaomi Changjiang Industrial Fund, Glory Ventures (耀途资本), and other investors.
The company’s core technology revolves around an AI-depth camera and a deep-learning 3D reconstruction algorithm, thus focusing on 3D interferometric imaging measurement with computational mathematics and deep learning technology. Ultimately, it is providing 3D machine vision solutions for customers in the industrial sector and machine manufacturing.
Emotibot (竹间智能); Founded in 2015, Series C
Emotibot provides a one-stop enterprise service for emotional artificial intelligence open platform. By combining AI technologies such as natural language processing, deep learning and knowledge engineering, Emotibot has developed its proprietary dialogue robot with emotion recognition abilities. The company currently have 6 industry-specific product lines including solutions for finance, healthcare, education, and intelligent data terminals.
Emotibot’s RMB 200 million Series C round was led by Bank of China International and joined by Bocom International and Lingfeng Capital.
Want to catch up on what’s been happening in China’s venture scene? Check out our earlier volumes of China’s Venture Roundup here.