IT

Bitfury and Plekhanov Russian University of Economics will pilot the program with Russian government funding.

Provided by Matrix Partner China and Ceyuan Ventures, the series A capital will help Renmin natural language processing spinout Elens mature its product development and R&D capabilities.

Two large and important deals above the $1bn mark in the e-commerce and e-retail space in East Asia appeared in the news last week. Both deals involved telecoms group SoftBank as a corporate backer.

IBM Blockchain Accelerator will focus on later-stage startups, while Columbia Blockchain Launch Accelerator has been established for pre-seed companies.

Each Friday the Global Corporate Venturing Deal Net rounds up the week’s smaller deals and tracks the emerging companies accessing corporate funds.

Five months after it was revealed to have backed a second close of Agora's $50m series B round, SIG has returned to contribute to its $70m series C.

IBM Blockchain Accelerator will focus on later-stage startups, while Columbia Blockchain Launch Accelerator has been established for pre-seed companies.

Kingdee supplied a reported $26.5m in funding for HR software provider Xinrenxinshi, taking its funding to $40m so far this year.

4490 Ventures has returned for the latest round for weather analytics service Understory, which has disclosed a total of $24.6m in funding to date.

Intel Capital and Airbus Ventures have both reinvested in the computer vision system developer, in a round that featured undisclosed auto component producers.

Ireland’s Comptroller and Auditor General has highlighted issues in a Waterford Institute of Technology licensing deal that garnered low returns when the spinout in question was acquired.