The mortgage technology developer raised $15.3m in a round featuring Mitsubishi Estate, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa, West Holdings and Credit Saison.

Ant Financial and Nikkei will have the chance to exit Chinese media and startup services provider 36Kr, which has filed for a $100m initial public offering in the US.

Optical semiconductor products supplier Raysees raised angel funding last year from investors including CAS Star, a Chinese Academy of Sciences affiliate.

Kristin Bannon and Serena Dayal have taken positions at SoftBank Vision Fund following stints at Morgan Stanley and Fortress Investment Group respectively.

Aflac, Dai-ichi Life Insurance, M3, Toyoshima, Japan Post and Toppan Printing have backed a $32.4m series C round for Unifa, which tracks the health of pre-schoolers.

SIG helped close a series A-plus round for Jikestar Programming for Children, with some of the cash earmarked for a new AI-powered student support technology.

BAI returned to back insurance services provider Mintbao having previously supplied angel funding in March 2018.

Strive, Yahoo Japan and Itochu are among the backers of the flying car developer’s $13.9m round, which took the company’s total funding to about $18m.

Tencent and Ookbee are both selling shares in their online literature joint venture, with China Literature subsidiary Cloudary investing $10.5m.

Introduction to Corporate Venturing and Japan Q4 2019 by James Mawson, editor-in-chief, Global Corporate Venturing