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The telecoms firm SoftBank has backed a substantial $300m round of gym membership provider Gympass, which is part of the beauty and fitness space, which has seen stable corporate-backed deal flow with rising valuations in recent years.

CMU's Edge Case Research has raised capital from Ansys, Lockheed Martin and Liberty Mutual to use AI for solving complex safety issues in autonomous technologies.

Sense Photonics will use the proceeds from the round, which includes Samsung Ventures and Shell Ventures, to bring its lidar system to market.

Lidar technology developer Sense Photonics has emerged from stealth with $26m in series A funding from investors co-led by the UC-backed Congruent Ventures.

Lidar technology producer Innoviz has closed its series C round at $170m, two and a half months after raising an initial $132m tranche featuring Harel Insurance and Phoenix Insurance.

Itochu was among the investors in a series B round that electric vehicle rental service Dishangtie closed at $100m earlier this year.

Stanford-StartX Fund joined others including Total Energy Ventures, Samsung Next and RATP Dev to back public transit management software publisher Swiftly.

Apple is rumoured to be preparing to move in for self-driving vehicle software developer Drive.ai, opening a potential exit for ride hailing service Grab.

SoftBank backed online lender Creditas, a company from the alternative lending space, which does not seem to have experienced exponential growth in valuations.

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

Erin Keller, formerly a senior associate at Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory Silicon Valley, has joined Toyota AI Ventures in a similar role.