First Round's inaugural cohort includes a manga comic translation tool developer and a company working on synthetic options for creating salmon.

JR East, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, Mitsui Fudosan, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Takenaka are among the backers of UTokyo IPC's First Round accelerator.

Online real estate marketplace Fangdd has filed for a $150m initial public offering that would allow Shanying International to exit.

Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.

Ant Financial is in discussions to lead the round, which could boost the online restaurant portal's valuation to $4bn and its stake to nearly 29%.

Hankyu Hanshin Properties was among the investors that provided $20.6m for the first tranche of smart lock developer Bitkey's series A round.

Joyoung-backed online grocery platform Benlai has received $200m in a series D1 round led by SF Express-owner Mingde Holdings.

Panasonic, Mitsui Sumitomo and NEC all booked exits after Honda's R&D unit acquired connected driving assistant technology developer Drivemode.

Morgan Stanley Private Equity backed a $42.2m round for non-banking lender Kogta Financial, having previously taken part in a November 2018 round through its Asia fund.

Tencent has led a series E round for VIPKid that reportedly could have been sized at as much as $500m, with the corporate in line to invest $150m.