Hong Kong Buzzing With New Unicorns

SenseTime entered the unicorn league when it raised $410 million in a Series B round this past July, giving it a total valuation of $1.5 billion. Now, SenseTime is getting ready to raise a next round of financing before the end of the year, and the amount could surpass its previous raise, co-founder and founding CEO Dr. Xu Li (see photo) told Silicon Dragon in an interview in Hong Kong. Read Forbes: Hong Kong Senses Unicorns
Dr. Xu is speaking at Silicon Dragon’s HK event, Nov. 16.

DEALS
Lightspeed China and Sequoia Capital China have invested  $58 million in China’s checkout-free store, Xing Bian Li – a  sign of things to come in retail outlets. Adding to this growing “smart retail” sector, GGV Capital backed Citybox with $15 million. China is once again leading the way with new innovations, this time making unmanned convenience stores popular.  VCs are bettng big on staff-less convenience stores.

Apple is acquiring New Zealand-based PowerbyProxy, a spin-out from the University of Auckland. The startup works on wireless batter charging. This deal is a major score for New Zealand innovation, which Silicon Dragon has covered.
Read Forbes, Kiwi Ingenuity.

SPOTLIGHT: On The Trail

Silicon Dragon’s Rebecca Fannin moderated a panel that paired up founders with their investors for a check on how things are going at the startup.  Here at the Cyberport Venture Capital event on Nov. 1 are Chibo Tang, Gobi Partners; Denes Ban, OurCrowd; Shuonan Chen, Agile VC; Toby Olshanetsky, Proov; Sheffeld Wang, Rescale and Raphael Cohen, Gobee Bike.

At the SoCal Innovation Forum in Los Angeles, Silicon Dragon’s Fannin was at the moderating helm again Nov. 4, orchestrating a Hollywood-China investor and production panel with Julia Pierrepont of Pierrepont Productions, Luke Xiang of Smart Cinema and Tracey Chen of Warner Bros.

 IPOs
Online peer-to-peer lender Hexindai from China jumped in its U.S. trading debut on Nasdaq. Its Chinese rival Qudian went public on the NYSE just two weeks prior and also did well, only to see shares tumble later. Meanwhile, PPDai plans to raise $298 million in an U.S. IPO before mid-November.