Rakuten Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of Japanese electronic commerce and Internet company, Rakuten, has led and invested in a $3.5 m series round of funding that will accelerate R&D activities with strategic partner ViSenze, an online visual search technology company.

Capital One bank opens its third and latest startup design laboratory in San Francisco.

The Japanese accelerator programme of France-based telecommunications company Orange has selected 8 startup entrants.

Academy for UK-based, early stage digital social ventures calls for applications to join its second class of startups.

STC Ventures, a venture capital fund independently managed by Iris Capital and whose anchor investor is the STC Group, has led a $1.7m investment in UAE-based Careem, a chauffeur-driven online car hiring service. The capital raised will be allocated to enhancing the Careem.com technology platform and expand its car booking service across the Middle East.

Mobile prescription management platform raises $1m seeding funding led by Atlas Venture and including SROne.