SEA
ComfortDelGro Corporation, Singapore’s largest taxi operator, partners Finnish tech firm MaaS Global and launch the latter’s mobile app Whim in Singapore. This is also Whim’s first Asian market. (KrASIA)
Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) brings in artificial intelligence (AI) to allow its editorial teams to better understand the kind of words and phrases that will help to attract readers. Now the computer will be vetting and making suggestions to headlines written by the team. (Mumbrella Asia)
Grab is about to receive some more of SoftBank’s funding. This comes at a time when Grab is actively looking to become a leading consumer technology group, offering a wide range of services from ride-hailing, food delivery, mobile payments to micro-loans. (Deal Street Asia)
China
China’s children’s reading service platform YueDuQiYuan is seeking a Pre-A series financing round. Having developed their own content and service, this startup offers both online and offline reading services. (KrASIA)
Togo, China’s car-sharing platform, has secured more than US$72 million to date. This startup operates on the same model as China’s bike sharing firms, but offers rental services for cars instead. (KrASIA)
Old-fashioned manual labour are necessary to build robust artificial intelligent systems. The Chinese people are now increasingly doing all the grunt work and this development is coming at a time when China is looking to fulfil its ‘Made in China 2025’ master plan. (SCMP)
Tencent revamps to refocus on its business customers. It has been behind its rivals in the push into AI and cloud computing. This move comes at a time when the giant is playing catch up amidst slowing growth. (CaiXin Global)
Miotech, AI Finance startup, is looking to simplify the investment process by offering machine-generated data analysis and insights. The company aims to differentiate itself from other players in the market by providing insights, as opposed to just data aggregation. (Technode)
Elsewhere
Droom, Indian online car dealer, raises yet another US$30m. The influx of funds will be used to further develop the firm’s machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. (KrASIA)
The U.S homeland security concurs with the verdicts of Amazon and Apple. Despite citing more than a dozen sources, the companies in question have all denied the Bloomberg ‘spy chip’ report. (TechCrunch)
Walmart announced its new partnership with the US movie studio Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) in its bid to boost its video on-demand service Vudu. Its video on-demand service has been falling behind its competitors like NetFlix Inc, and Hulu LLC. (Reuters)
As companies compete in the 5G race, the fight for cellular airwaves begins. Governments around the world have started to auction off spectrum for mobile coverage that will are crucial for tech companies. (WSJ)
Medical startup Heartbeat is here to leverage on digital technologies to blend with medical tests and advice to reduce the rate of heart diseases. It has since begun opening clinics all over New York and it operates on the premise that apps alone won’t be able to fix health care. (CNBC)