Startup news: China
The April 2020 startup news round-up for China, covering China’s tech, fintech and VC news with a preferred focus on the early-stage startup scene. News items are gathered at the country level, rather than at a country-plus-technology level, to provide a view of overall movement and developments in China’s startup news.
The links listed below are China’s startup news headlines from April 2020, with each link taking you to the online news source for that headline, generally covering either an individual Chinese startup in the news or the wider Chinese startup ecosystem in some way – VC, government startup support initiatives, or startup industry body news, for instance.
- China’s Rokid looking to deploy infra-red thermal imaging wearables in US to detect COVID-19 symptoms
- ICYMI: UK Gov’t selects Ericsson as vendor to replace China’s Huawei for Britain’s 5G network and equipment
- China: Hainan rolls out 350 facial recognition-backed public service terminals dealing with over 150 tasks and applications, aiming for faster, streamlined gov’t services
- China: Shenzhen’s MicroBT to roll out 3 news bitcoin miners in competition with Bitmain, focusing on electricity efficiency in the mining process
- China Mobile Blockchain Association Committee and tech firm Chongqing Jinwowo to collaborate on creation of ‘blockchain and e-commerce ecology’ lab
- China: XiaoduoAI raises $28M with AI-driven customer service chatbots focused on e-commerce
- China: Suzhou municipal government employees to receive 50% of their May transportation subsidies in DCEP digital currency as state-owned banks step up testing
- China: Intellifusion AI chipmaker secures $141M with surveillance platform applications spanning jaywalking fines to COVID-19 identification
- People’s Bank of China, country’s central bank, has said that its digital currency could be used in the 2022 Winter Olympics event, hinting at CBDC launch schedule
- China: Alibaba Cloud to invest additional $28BN into its infrastructure over the next 3 years, building on 63 existing availability zones internationally
- MIT terminates research partnership with China’s iFlytek AI firm over supply of technology for surveillance, repression and detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang
- China: Bytedance, parent of TikTok and Toutiao, to recruit for 10K new positions, with sights on 100K staff globally by year-end and aiming to match Alibaba headcount
- China: Baidu internet giant launches Apollo free robotaxi service in Changsha, Hunan, becoming one of the country’s first firms to carry passengers in autonomous vehicles
- RIPE NCC, the regional internet registry for Europe, West Asia and former USSR, is formally against China’s authoritarian-focused New IP proposal
- China: Red Date, little-known tech firm but a key component in state-supported Blockchain Service Network, effectively the e-commerce facet of the Belt and Road initiative
- China: Pinduoduo group-buying e-commerce major sets sights on rural China with agricultural goods-focused $7.1BN campaign spanning the next 5 years
- China: Codemao online programming education platform raises new $35M round with focus on coding education for children from 7 to 16 years
- China: An overview of the issues for the country’s Bitcoin mining space presented by the approaching Bitcoin halving event
- China: Starbucks and McDonald’s reportedly among 19 restaurants and retail stores to be involved in testing central bank digital currency in Xiong’An new district
- China: An overview of LiBiao, fast-growing robotics firm focused on operational efficiency of e-commerce distribution centers
- China: Dao Foods cross-border impact investment firm partners New Crop Capital early stage VC fund to launch incubator for plant-based startups
- ICYMI: Lair East Labs’ Supernova Global Pitch Competition applications open, seeking startups with a global vision looking for market-entry opportunities in China
- China’s Alibaba Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service market share in APAC broke 28% in 2019 (9.1% globally), with 63 availability zones across 21 regions
- China: Guangzhou’s public buses now feature tablets requiring passengers to be photographed and monitored for temperature in new addition to surveillance tech
- China: TikTok short-video platform diversifying into long-form with addition of full movie streaming and experiments with audio
- China: Shanghai courts launch 6-month pilot program to use AI assistants to transcribe case notes, pull out files and present digitised evidence
- China: 4Paradigm AI firm, founded by former Baidu engineers, raises additional $230M, taking valuation to $2BN and adding to backing of China’s 5 largest banks
- China: Yuanfudao online education platform secures $1BN in new funding round as coronavirus outbreak drives up demand for e-learning from home
- China: A look at Unity Drive Innovation, autonomous delivery vehicle startup delivering fresh produce to 16 communities locked down by coronavirus in Zibo
- China: Qcraft self-driving vehicle startup, founded by former Google Maps and Waymo engineers, closes seed round
- China: An overview of VC firm NGC Ventures, the country’s most active crypto investor
- China: Binance cryptocurrency exchange launches Blockchain Technology and Industry Research Institute in Shanghai
- China: Livestreaming commerce sales value in China expected to hit $129BN in 2020, more than double the figure for 2019
- Huawei open-sources MindSpore AI framework, aiming to take on Google’s TensorFlow and Facebook’s PyTorch in application development
- China: Ksher mobile payments aggregator secures $10M with over 100K merchants, annual transaction volume of over $1BN, POS solutions and more
- China: Country’s 3 largest telcos unveil plans for rich 5G messaging using RCS, expanding on SMS services and seen in part as competition move focused on WeChat
- China: Ministry of Industry and Info Tech, Huawei and state-run telcos propose New IP internet protocol, essentially making internet infrastructure an arm of the state
- China Mobile issues $5.2BN in 5G contracts, near all going to Huawei and ZTE and aiming for 28-province coverage and an estimated 232K basestations
- China: Bilibili video-sharing and entertainmennt platform gains $400M investment from Sony, in exchange for a 5% share in ownership
- ICYMI: US Gov’t prepares to revoke and terminate China Telecom services to and from US, citing potential for malicious cyber activity, economic espionage and more
- China: AutoX autonomous driving startup opens Shanghai gigafactory, at 80,000 square feet the biggest robotaxi data and operations centre in Asia
- China’s TikTok found to have security vulnerability that allows hackers to swap fake videos into a TikTok users’ social feed
- China: National blockchain committee launches with Huawei, Baidu, Tencent, Ant Financial, JD, People’s Bank and technical university delegates
- China: Huawei to launch Huawei Card, physical and digital consumer credit card service backed by UnionPay payments giant for NFC and QR code payments
- China: A brief intro to 10 of Guangzhou’s gaming startups
- China: dForce Foundation secures $1.5M seed funding with Lendf, platform for lending fiat-backed stablecoins, and synthetic fiat stablecoin USDx
- China: State-owned Agricultural Bank of China now trialing test front-end interface for the country’s central bank digital currency
- Australia: Washington Post highlights University of Queensland’s actions regarding student critical of China over Hong Kong, Tibet, Uighurs and free speech
- ICYMI: Japan earmarks $2.2BN of record economic stimulus package to help its manufacturers shift production out of China as coronavirus disrupts supply chains
- Singapore’s NIUM fintech platform partners Geoswift to allow customers to remit money directly into bank accounts in China via UnionPay
- Huawei partners China’s UnionPay bank card clearing service provider to launch Huawei Pay service in Singapore
- Taiwan gov’t bans all official use of Zoom, citing cybersecurity concerns over data routed through China
- Thailand: Siriraj Public Hospital to implement AI and 5G solutions provided by China’s Huawei in the fight against COVID-19
