SEA
Singapore-based home caregiver matching app company Homage today announced raising a Series A round of US$4.15 million co-led by Golden Gate Ventures and HealthXCapital, a health tech-centric venture capital fund. (KrASIA)
Doctor Anywhere, a Singapore-based healthcare startup, has raised $4.1 million in a Series A round led by Kamet Capital Partners. The startup plans to use the proceeds to develop its products and services, as well as to grow its team and explore new business verticals. (Deal Street Asia)
Singapore’s medical technology startup Clearbridge BioMedics has raised $4.8 million in a pre-IPO round. (Deal Street Asia)
China
Australia-based cross-border payments firm Airwallex has closed its Series B round with $80 million in funding to expand operations globally and provide a more comprehensive range of end to end solutions. Founded in 2015, the backers of its latest round include Chinese Internet services giant Tencent, investment firm Sequoia China, Hillhouse, Horizons Ventures, Central Capital Ventura, and Square Peg. (KrASIA)
Alibaba has invested ¥110 million ($ 16.4 million) in Haoshiqi, a food e-commerce platform. The e-commerce giant has previously invested twice in the startup. (Caijing)
After a series of tests, Beijing issued the license for self-driving car road testing to a startup for the first time. Autonomous vehicle startup Pony.ai obtained the T3 license and will conduct open road tests in Beijing. (Xinhua)
Media and entertainment company CMC Inc. has raised a ¥ 10 billion ($ 1.5 billion) round co-led by Vanke, Alibaba and Tencent. The company’s valuation reaches ¥ 40 billion ($ 6 billion) after the round. (36Kr)
Tencent Music is reportedly planning to file for a US IPO on July 6. The company will tap Goldman Sachs and Mogan Stanly as lead underwriters. (PingWest)
Tencent’s super app WeChat will begin charging a fee of 0.1% on credit card repayment. (SCMP)
Alibaba has reached a partnership with French conglomerate Bollore Group in cloud computing, clean energy, and logistics among others. (Reuters)
Inventory distribution startup Aikucun has raised a $87-million Series B round led by Legend Capital. Eastern Bell Venture Capital and C&D Corp have also participated in the round. (Deal Street Asia)
Xiaomi was sued by an individual for patent infringement ahead of its much-anticipated IPO. (Technode)
Rest of Asia
Zozo, a Japanese online fashion retailer, announced it’s betting on bespoke services by using bodysuit which helps consumers measure their bodies. (Reuters)
World
Quartz has been acquired by Japanese Uzabase for up to $110 million. The business and tech news service said it will maintain the brand and editorial team. (TC)
Facebook is acquiring Bloomsbury AI, a NLP startup based in London, to fight fake news and solve other content problems. (TC)
Tesco and Carrefour have reached a deal to collaborate on how the two companies buy from suppliers in a bid to lower the prices to fight against rival Amazon. (WSJ)
Lyft has acquired bike-sharing company Motivate which accounts for around 80% of bike-sharing rides in the US according to Lyft. (The Verge)
Tesla seeks to produce 6k Model 3 a week by late August. The EV maker recently met its production goal of 5k sedans a week. (WSJ)
Gadgets
Samsung users complain that their smartphones have randomly sent photos and texts to contacts. (TC)
Good News Bad News
HTC is laying off 1.5k staff to cut costs. This move comes after the company transferred 2k engineers to Google. (TC)