Startups

14:43

                            Mortgage rates drop to the lowest level in over a year, pushing refinancing 111% higher annually
                        
17:42

                            Pony.ai plans to list in Hong Kong within two weeks and aims to raise over US$500 million
                        
                            It is reported that Pony.ai plans to go public in Hong Kong within two weeks and aims to raise more than US$500 million.
                        
14:48

                            Yuanli Intelligence completes $8 million seed round financing
                        
                            Yuanli Intelligence, an enterprise intelligence company, has completed an $8 million seed round of funding led by BlueRun Ventures and participated by Guangyuan Entrepreneurs Fund. Founded by Zhang Fan, former COO of Zhipu AI, the company focuses on training digital workers through business reinforcement learning for enterprise clients.
                        
14:33

                            SoftBank announced that it will cancel treasury shares equivalent to 2.86% of its issued shares on October 31.
                        
13:15

                            Zhengzhou High-tech Zone Solicits Opinions: Newly established science and technology branches in Zhengzhou High-tech Zone will be rewarded 200,000 yuan each after review.
                        
                            A notice soliciting public comments on the "Ten Measures for Science and Technology Finance in the Zhengzhou High-tech Zone" (draft for comments) states that newly established science and technology sub-banks in the Zhengzhou High-tech Zone will receive a 200,000 yuan reward upon review. A "key project database for investment and loan linkage" will be established and distributed monthly to banks. Companies included in the database will automatically be included in the IPO incubation system and provided with professional financial services. Newly established science and technology sub-banks in the Zhengzhou High-tech Zone will receive a 200,000 yuan reward upon review. The zone will also seek long-term, patient capital from national funds, asset investment companies (AICs), insurance asset management funds, and other sources to establish sub-funds in the Zhengzhou High-tech Zone. The High-tech Zone Government Investment Fund will provide up to 30% of the funding, with a maximum of 300 million yuan. Major matters will be determined by the Management Committee on a case-by-case basis.
                        
08:21

                            SoftBank Group's stock price fell by more than 8% at one point, the biggest drop since August 2020
                        
                            SoftBank Group's stock price fell by more than 8% at one point, the biggest drop since August 2020.
                        
08:10

                            SoftBank's Japanese shares fell more than 6% in early trading.
                        
17:55

                            The first AIC mother fund in China was launched, with a planned sub-fund size of 20 billion yuan.
                        
                            On October 21st, Shenzhen Jianyuan Zhengxing Equity Investment Fund ("Jianyuan Zhengxing Fund") officially launched in Shenzhen. Upon its establishment, the fund is expected to become China's largest AIC fund and the country's first AIC fund of funds. Jointly initiated by Jianxin Financial Asset Investment Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Ocean Investment Company, Shenzhen Guidance Fund, and Futian District Guidance Fund, the fund will have a 7 billion yuan AIC fund of funds, with a planned 20 billion yuan sub-fund. The fund will invest in sub-funds such as the Shenzhen "20+8" Industrial Fund and the Industry Chain Leader CVC Fund, complementing the Shenzhen "20+8" Industrial Fund with complementary investments.
                        
10:49

                            Shenzhen's wealth management market has surpassed 31 trillion yuan, accounting for 20% of the country's total.
                        
                            At the Xiangmihu Wealth Management Week and Bay Area Wealth Management High-Quality Development Exchange Conference held today, Shenzhen municipal government officials stated that Shenzhen's total wealth management scale currently exceeds 31 trillion yuan, a 7% increase from the beginning of the year, accounting for 20% of the national total and ranking third among large and medium-sized cities in China. Focusing on new-quality productivity, Shenzhen has seized the opportunity offered by the pilot program for equity investment by asset investment companies (AICs) and has already launched six AIC pilot funds with a total scale of 15.16 billion yuan. Additionally, there are ongoing AIC fund reserve projects totaling 22.1 billion yuan.
                        
12:05

                            Aishi Technology completes RMB 100 million in new round B+ financing
                        
                            On October 17th, AI video company Aishi Technology completed a RMB 100 million Series B+ funding round, with investors including Fosun Ruizheng, Tongchuang Weiye, and Shunxi Fund. Founded in April 2023, Aishi Technology has raised over US$100 million in funding to date.
                        
07:52

                            Kai-Fu Lee: We don't rule out doing large-scale pre-training in the future, but it's not cost-effective at the moment.
                        
                            In January of this year, Zero One Everything, founded by Kai-Fu Lee, garnered media attention for abandoning its pre-training business for ultra-large models (thousands of parameters or more). Having abandoned its pursuit of training ultra-large models, Zero One Everything subsequently focused on enterprise model applications. At the East China Digital Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai on September 25th, the company announced the latest developments in its Wanzhi Enterprise Large Model One-Stop Platform 2.0, featuring Wanzhi Enterprise Agent as its core module. The company also announced a comprehensive upgrade of its government and enterprise service strategy, with a clear focus on enterprise-level agent deployment. Two days later, at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business' 20th Anniversary CEO Homecoming celebration, Kai-Fu Lee delivered a speech titled "AI Agents: The Core Technology CEOs Need to Pay Most Attention to." In his speech, Lee emphasized that agents can reshape existing internal business and organizational structures, and that CEOs need to give them the greatest attention in this era. After the speech, Lee and Zero One Everything's new co-founder, Shen Pengfei, were interviewed by The Paper. Kai-Fu Lee stated that Zero One Everything has abandoned pre-training large models with over a trillion parameters. The team is now focused on lightweight, high-performance industrial models and their applications. Pre-training large models offers a very low cost-effectiveness and return on investment (ROI) for startups. Furthermore, he believes that Agent's most valuable use case in China lies not with consumer users but with the enterprise market.
                        
01:17

                            SoftBank and Ark Fund are in talks to participate in a large Tether financing round
                        
                            SoftBank and Ark Fund are in talks to participate in a large financing round for Tether.
                        
11:45

                            SoftBank Group's shares fell 4.1%.
                        
21:32

                            Oracle (ORCL.N) shares opened down 3.9 percent after the company planned to raise $18 billion in debt.
                        
16:12

                            Oracle (ORCL.N) fell 1% in premarket trading as the company sought $18 billion in debt financing.
                        
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