A Recap on What Happened This Week: Asian Startup News Overview (14th August -August 18th)

August has been an economically active month that has seen innumerable policy introductions, notable being the President of Indonesia is presenting the yearly budget, Chinese regulators introducing measures to resuscitate the stock market, Japan witnessing inflation stabilization, and many more. Startups are increasingly seeing tremendous support and regulations for smoother free market operations, which is good.

This week, we saw many startups receive funding from overseas investors, which sends an excellent message to founders that they can secure international funding from prominent venture capitalists. This week, mainly, saw Web3 and green mobility startups take centre stage

ZTX

Jump Crypto led a $13 million seed round for Singapore's Web3 virtual world and creator platform ZTX. ZTX said in a statement on Aug 15 that notable investors included Collab+Currency, Parataxis, MZ Web3 Fund, Everest Ventures Group, and others.

It stated that investors' trust in ZTX reflects the market's recognition of the project's significant potential in the Web3 space, as well as the team's unique advantages, including the more than 400 million lifetime users attracted by its legacy Web2 business ZEPETO.

According to active user metrics, ZEPETO is the world's fourth largest metaverse platform, trailing only Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft, and it also has hundreds of active strategic partnerships ranging from Gucci and Starbucks to K-Pop girl groups BLACKPINK.

Beep

Beep, a Singapore-based Internet of things (IoT) transaction platform startup, has completed its seed round, led by GGV Capital and Wing Vasiksiri.

According to a statement issued by Beep on Aug 17, the round included participation from NUS Technology Holdings (a wholly owned subsidiary of NUS), SUTD Venture Holdings, XA Network, and other prominent angel investors. The funds will be used to improve technical connectivity and build Southeast Asia's largest roaming network, with plans to expand into Malaysia, Thailand, and beyond.

Beep stated that it will continue collaborating with additional charge point operators, vehicle OEMs, and fleets to expand the network collaboratively and on a permission basis.

"Southeast Asia is at a critical juncture in its transition to a fully electric future, with Singapore leading the way due to our relative maturity and charging network density," said Kristoffer Jacek Soh, Beep's Co-Founder and CEO.

NWTN

NWTN, a Dubai-based green mobility solutions start-up, has announced plans to invest $500 million in China Evergrande Group's electric vehicle (EV) unit. NWTN will receive a 27.50% stake in China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group (NEV) as a result of the investment, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2023, subject to regulatory approvals.

Following the announcement, NEV's stock rose nearly 50% as the company announced plans to repay a $3.2 billion debt. NWTN sees this capital injection as an opportunity to accelerate its development in the EV sector and meet the Middle East's growing EV demand.

Founded by Chinese entrepreneur Alan Nan Wu, NWTN operates an EV assembly facility in Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (Kizad), which is part of AD Ports Group. The company has been strategically expanding its business in markets in the Middle East, North Africa, and China.

Xverse

Hong Kong-based bitcoin wallet Xverse has raised $5 million in seed funding round led by Jump Crypto.

RockawayX, Sfermion, Alliance, NGC Ventures, V3ntures, Old Fashion Research, 2140 Bitcoin Ecosystem Fund, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Newman Capital, Franklin Templeton, New Layer Capital, Miton C, Gossamer Capital, Daxos Capital, Sora Ventures, Tyhke Block Ventures, IOBC Capital, and Despread also participated in the round, according to a statement from Xverse.

Xverse has also brought on board strategic angels such as Udi Wertheimer, 9gagceo, Pio, Ninos, Ninor Mansor, Larry Salibra, and businessman.eth, each of whom brings unique expertise to Xverse's development.

"This seed funding sends a strong signal to Bitcoin, the most decentralised and secure settlement layer, that it is here to stay," says the author.

“This funding will enable us to accelerate advanced features around DeFi, stacks, lightning and other bitcoin scalability solutions,” said Ken Liao, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xverse.

Anthropic

SK Telecom, South Korea's largest telco, announced a $100 million investment in Anthropic, a U.S. artificial intelligence firm, to strengthen its telecommunications-driven AI business.

Anthropic, a startup competing with OpenAI in developing AI foundation models is one of the most well-funded AI firms, having raised $450 million in May from investors, including Alphabet Inc's Google and Spark Capital.

SK Telecom, which also made a smaller investment in May, announced on Sunday that the two companies intend to collaborate on the development of a global telecommunications-oriented multilingual large language model as well as the development of an AI platform.