Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was fun. Back in the studio, Connie Loizos, Matthew Lynley, your humble servant, and Ramneek Gupta, managing director of Citi Ventures was with us to provide the venture perspective. As you can probably guess, we got […]
View More Equity podcast: More funding for scooters, Cruise gets a boost, and Chinese IPOsCategory: alibaba
Alibaba doubles down on logistics with $1.4B investment in Chinese courier ZTO
Alibaba is doubling down on logistics after it led a $1.38 billion investment in Chinese courier firm ZTO Express alongside Alibaba logistics affiliate Cainiao. ZTO went public on the NYSE in 2016 raising $1.4 billion from what was the year’s largest IPO in the U.S. The Shanghai-based company claims to be one of China’s largest […]
View More Alibaba doubles down on logistics with $1.4B investment in Chinese courier ZTOTencent leads $50M investment in NewsDog, an app vying to be India’s Toutiao
The growth of China’s Bytedance, an ambitious $30 billion tech firm, and its highly-addictive Toutiao news aggregator app has set off a search for services with similar growth potential across the world. India, second in population only to China with rapidly-growing internet access, is an obvious place to look, and would-be pretender to the Toutiao […]
View More Tencent leads $50M investment in NewsDog, an app vying to be India’s ToutiaoAlibaba’s newest initiative aims to make Hong Kong a global AI hub
Alibaba is teaming up with SenseTime, the world’s highest-valued AI startup, to launch a not-for-profit artificial intelligence lab in Hong Kong in a bid to make the city a global hub for artificial intelligence. Alibaba, which is SenseTime’s largest single investor thanks to a recent $600 million round at a valuation of $4.5 billion, is […]
View More Alibaba’s newest initiative aims to make Hong Kong a global AI hubAlibaba buys Rocket Internet’s Daraz to expand its e-commerce empire into South Asia
Alibaba has expanded its e-commerce empire into South Asia after the Chinese internet giant acquired Daraz in an undisclosed deal. Daraz was founded in 2012 by Rocket Internet and today it operates in Pakistan as well as Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Rocket said in a statement that Alibaba has acquired the entire Daraz business. […]
View More Alibaba buys Rocket Internet’s Daraz to expand its e-commerce empire into South AsiaHow did Thumbtack win the on-demand services market?
Earlier today, the services marketplace Thumbtack held a small conference for 300 of its best gig economy workers at an event space in San Francisco. For the nearly ten-year-old company the event was designed to introduce some new features and a redesign of its brand that had softly launched earlier in the week. On hand, […]
View More How did Thumbtack win the on-demand services market?Alibaba beats forecasts with 61% growth and predicts more of the same for the next year
Alibaba is forecasting yet more growth for its business after it beat analyst forecasts with its fourth-quarter results. Revenue came in at 61.9 billion RMB ($9.9 billion), an increase of 61 percent year-over-year, which topped a 59.6 billion RMB prediction from analysts polled by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The company’s net income for the quarter did […]
View More Alibaba beats forecasts with 61% growth and predicts more of the same for the next yearReport: Smartphone usage set to overtake time spent watching TV in China
2018 is the year that smartphone usage eclipses time spent watching TV in China and it’s all down to the growth of digital video platforms, according to a new report from eMarketer. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this had already happened in China, which happens to be the world’s largest smartphone market, but eMarketer forecasts […]
View More Report: Smartphone usage set to overtake time spent watching TV in ChinaCloud Foundry Foundation looks east as Alibaba joins as a gold member
Cloud Foundry is among the most successful open source project in the enterprise right now. It’s a cloud-agnostic platform-as-a-service offering that helps businesses develop and run their software more efficiently. In many enterprises, it’s now the standard platform for writing new applications. Indeed, half of the Fortune 500 companies now use it in one form […]
View More Cloud Foundry Foundation looks east as Alibaba joins as a gold memberIs America’s national security Facebook and Google’s problem?
Jamie Metzl Contributor Share on Twitter Jamie Metzl is a Senior Fellow for Technology and National Security at the Atlantic Council. More posts by this contributor Homo Sapiens 2.0? We need a species-wide conversation about the future of human genetic enhancement Eleonore Pauwels Contributor Share on Twitter Eleonore Pauwels is Director of the Anticipatory Intelligence […]
View More Is America’s national security Facebook and Google’s problem?Alibaba’s Ant Financial is reportedly raising billions more at a valuation of at least $100B
Ant Financial, the Alibaba affiliate that looks after the firm’s hugely popular Alipay service, is reportedly gearing up for an enormous funding round that could take its valuation to $100-$150 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported that Ant is in talks to raise upwards of $9 billion at the $100 billion mark, while Bloomberg suggested […]
View More Alibaba’s Ant Financial is reportedly raising billions more at a valuation of at least $100BChina’s SenseTime, the world’s highest valued AI startup, raises $600M
The future of artificial intelligence (AI), the technology that is seen as potentially impacting almost every industry on the planet, is widely acknowledged to be a war between tech firms in America and China. In a notable side-note to that battle, China now has the world’s highest-valued AI startup after SenseTime, a company founded in […]
View More China’s SenseTime, the world’s highest valued AI startup, raises $600M