This week, Amazon announced it is starting to offer quantum computing services (called “Amazon Braket”) on AWS.
Here is a videos to explain the basic unit in quantum computing, Quantum Bit, or Qubit.
Tag: Tech
CB Insights: Everything You Need To Know About What Amazon Is Doing In Financial Services
A 2018 report by CB Insights.
A good reading as I was thinking about future payment industry (also you can find a previous post on How Card Networks May Fail: Top Merchants With Gift Cards + Mobile Wallet)
Full report here; table of contents below
- Amazon’s product strategy
Payments
Cash
Lending
Amazon’s Next Financial Pillar - Market strategy outside the US
India
Mexico - Rumors: What will Amazon do next?
- Closing thoughts
Master Innovation And Development Plan By Sidewalk Toronto
Earlier this year, I shared 「Video of the Week」Future Cities by Sidewalk Labs.
Now we have many more documents from Sidewalk Toronto. Google is trying to build cities.
The plan will begin with Quayside in Phase I.
There will be several focuses
- Mobility. A transportation system that reduces the need to own a car by providing safe, convenient, connected, and affordable options for every trip.
- Common & social areas. A system of streets, parks, plazas, and open spaces that encourages people to spend more time outdoors, together; health, civic life, learning, and workforce initiatives and facilities that enable people to thrive.
- Buildings & Housing. Sustainable and adaptable buildings with mixed uses; affordable residences.
- Environmental friendly as a climate-positive community.
- Digitalize every possible part of the city.
Read more here.
Waterfront Toronto’s Digital Strategy Advisory Panel Preliminary
Commentary and Questions
Digital Innovation Appendix (DIA) for Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP)
「What’s News In China」
Gree Electric Appliances (格力电器) finalized the 15% stake sale for RMB41.7 billionIt is one of the most watched private equity deal in China. The deal, part of China’s efforts to reduce government ownership, will reduce the state-owned Zhuhai Gree Group’s stake to 3.2 percent. Hillhouse’s Zhuhai Mingjun with the newly acquired 15% stake becomes the largest single shareholder. Hillhouse through Zhuhai Mingjun can nominate 3 seats in the 9-member board (in addition to two board seats from Hillhouse’ Zhuhai Gaoling and alliance Pearl Brilliance) and agreed to an equity incentive plan of no more than 4 percent. // 36Kr
Baidu’s smart speaker leads in China in 2019 Q3. According to Strategy Analytics, Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) shipped 4.3 million smart speakers in 2019 Q3, growing 130% yoy, surpassing Alibaba and Xiaomi, whose product shipments follow closely. Before Baidu launched its smart speaker with proprietary DuerOS voice AI, Alibaba and Xiaomi were dividing up the market share in China. // StrategyAnalytics
Tencent is officially launching Nintendo Switch in China. Tencent held a press conference on Dec 4 in Shanghai, announcing that the official Chinese version of the Nintendo Switch will launch in mainland China next week (Dec 10). Tencent and Nintendo first announced the partnership in April this year. The Switch will include a copy of New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, selling for 2,099 yuan (~$297). // Tencent
SoftBank Has An Easy Strategy – Mobile Payment In Every Emerging Economy
SoftBank might be the investment firm outside of China that understands mobile payments the best.
Tapping Ant Financial and Tencent’s interests in overseas markets, SoftBank has investments in every major emerging economy.
Southeast Asia: Grab
SoftBank inject another $2 billion earlier this year into Grab. It first invested in GrabTaxi back in 2014 with $250 million Series D, making itself the largest shareholder. GrabTaxi then rebranded into Grab in 2016, entering into payment service with GrabPay and other businesses. It also acquired Kudo based in Indonesia in 2017 to beef up its payment platform.
[Also, in July, Softbank’s Vision Fund and GIC invested $300 million in e-wallet VNPAY’s parent company for Vietnam]
India: Paytm
This week, SoftBank and Ant Financial injected $1 billion into Paytm. The competition intensifies with Google Pay, payments from e-commerce and Facebook’s payment especially on WhatsApp.
Argentina: Ualá
On November 25, Ualá raised a $150 million Series C led by Tencent and SoftBank. Ualá is a mobile banking tech platform and allows users to transfer money, invest in mutual funds, request loans, pay bills and top-up prepaid services.
Mexico: Clip
SoftBank invested $20 million in Clip, leading a $100 million round in May. Clip offers Square-like products for merchant payments, as the country is more relying on cards.
Updates – Mexico: Konfio
On December 3, SoftBank invested $100 million into Konfio, which provides credit underwriting, or SMB loans.
Combining Konfio and Clip will create the Square or Clover in Mexico.
An easy model and bet on those economies.
「News of the Week」Japan’s New Internet Giant
WSJ – Yahoo Japan and Chat App Line Agree to Merge
As part of the deal, SoftBank Group subsidiary SoftBank Corp. and Naver said they would buy all the shares in Line not already owned by Naver at ¥5,200 ($47.78) a share. Naver owns 72.6% of Line as of Monday. SoftBank Corp. and Naver will pay ¥170 billion ($1.56 billion) each to buy those Line shares, SoftBank said.
Line Pay has 37 million users and PayPay, operated jointly by SoftBank and Yahoo Japan, has 19 million. (Nikkei)
Dots to connect: competitions in ads, e-commerce, payment in Japan, monetization on 82 million Line MAU, Japan moving to cash-less, SoftBank’s consolidated financial performance, new superapp, etc.
「Video of the Week」Jumia
「What’s News In China」
Shanghai Green Valley Pharmaceuticals (Green Valley, 绿谷制药) today announced on Nov 2 that China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has approved Oligomannate (GV-971) as new drug for the treatment of “mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and improving cognitive function.” It is the first novel drug approved for Alzheimer’s disease globally since 2003. The company is also planning a global phase 3 trial with sites in the U.S., Europe and other parts of Asia in early 2020 to support regulatory filings around the world. // prnewswire | fiercepharma
On Nov 5, Nio (NASDAQ: NIO), long being seen as the Tesla in China, announced its partnership with Intel’s Mobileye to build self-driving EVs. Under the planned collaboration, Mobileye will provide NIO with the design of the self-driving system building on the Mobileye AV Series, a L4 AV kit comprised of the Mobileye EyeQ® system-on-chip, hardware, driving policy, safety software and mapping solution. NIO will take on the automotive-grade engineering, integration and mass-production of Mobileye’s system for both consumer automotive markets and for Mobileye’s mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) applications. In addition to integrating the self-driving system into its vehicle lines, NIO will develop a specially configured variant of electric AVs that Mobileye will use as robotaxis, deployed for ride-hailing services in global markets. // TechCrunch| intel
36Kr (NASDAQ: KRKR), a Beijing-based news and data provider, known for tracking fundraising and tech related news in China, raised $20 million in its Friday debut on NASDAQ. The company is similar to TechCrunch or Crunchbase (its affiliated Crunchbase News). // Crunchbase News
Meituan: Fighting Every War
The current Meituan (MeituanDianping) came from a merger between Meituan and Dianping in December 2015.
Once a company invested by Alibaba, Meituan has become more closer with Tencent after the merger.
At the beginning of 2016, MeituanDianping raised $3.3 billion from Tencent, DST Global and Temasek at a $15 billion pre-money valuation; meanwhile, Alibaba sold its stake for ~$900 million in the same month.
Later that year, in April 2016, Alibaba invested the $900 million in Ele.me and Ant Financial invested $350 million.
The war has already changed from Yelp and Groupon to more comprehensive areas – restaurants and other local services.
[Note – in 2014, Priceline (now Booking.com) agreed to buy restaurant booking service OpenTable for about $2.6 billion in cash. But in China, dining is not exactly scheduled by time but by getting a number into the line, determined by how many people are ahead of you.]
However, US and China are similar in the world of food delivery. Meituan and Ele.me are fighting in China while Uber Eats, DoorDash, GrubHub, PostMates are fighting in the US. The difference – China uses e-bikes and US uses cars.
And for other services like movies, Meituan spun-off Maoyan in 2016. Maoyan is competing with Tao Piaopiao, which raised ¥1.7 billion in 2016.
In the US, the market is led by Fandango and Atom Tickets. But the market is not limited to movies – it’s about all kinds of shows, concerts and exhibitions.
Meituan is also offering hotel & travel bookings, fighting in the war with Ctrip.
Going back to Meituan, it raised $4 billion in October 2017 from Tencent, Sequoia, GIC and Tiger Global.
Meituan Dianping introduced its ride-hailing operation Meituan Dache in February 2018.
In April 2018, Alibaba acquired Ele.me for $9.5 billion.
Same week , Meituan acquired mobike for $2.7 billion.
Later that month, Ant Financials led a round of $700 million for Hellobike.
Meituan went for IPO in Hong Kong in September 2018, raising $4.2 billion.
Another OTA, Tongcheng-Elong, with Tencent and Ctrip as major shareholders, went IPO in Hong Kong in November 2018, raising $180 million.
Summing up the wars Meituan is in:
- Food delivery: with Alibaba’s Ele.me; same-day delivery: Dada-JD Daojia
- Movie tickets: with Alibaba’s Tao Piaopiao
- Ride-hailing: with Didi
- Bike-sharing: with Hellobike and Didi Bike (Qingju)
- Hotel and travel booking: with Ctrip
- Payment & wallet
- …
「What’s News In China」
Tencent will lead the development of blockchain-based invoice system in China. The invoices will be created as part of the project named “General Framework of DLT-Based Invoices,” which was approved and supported by countries such as the UK, Switzerland, Sweden and Brazil during an ITU-T international meeting on e-invoice standards. As of August 10, more than 6 million blockchain e-invoices have been issued, and more than 5,300 companies have been registered in China to use blockchain e-invoices since the first…was issued by Tencent on August 10, 2018. // globaltimes | TNW
China has banned online sales of e-cigarettes on Nov 1. All websites and apps selling e-cigarettes should be shut down and all online marketing campaigns halted; online shopping platforms need to remove e-cigarette products from their sites. The measures are aimed at protecting adolescents from vaping. // 烟草专卖局 | Bloomberg
Biotechnology company Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) announced on Oct 31 that it is taking a 20.5% stake in BeiGene (NASDAQ: BGNE), one of the largest biotech companies in China for $2.7 billion. The all-cash deal values BeiGene at $174.85 per American depository share, a 25% premium to BeiGene’s closing price on the Nasdaq on Wednesday. BeiGene’s stock jumped 37% the next day. // Amgen