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Hello readers,
As the host of our Startup Snapshot podcast (which you should totally check out), I’m an avid listener of a wide variety of podcasts.
What’s most recently been on my playlist is Habitat, a show that follows six NASA volunteers as they stay on a remote mountain in Hawaii for a year and simulate the isolated experience of a mission to Mars.
Putting humans on the Red Planet is an endeavor fraught with danger. Communications with ground control have a two-week delay time, and a lot can go wrong during the journey.
Despite that, efforts are ongoing to turn the dream of a Mars mission into a reality. The possibility of discovering something there that could change our world is too good to pass up.
In some ways, this resonates with the psyche of a startup founder. Launching a business is no easy feat, but that doesn’t deter entrepreneurs from creating what most people may not have even conceived. And for those who succeed, they can say they’ve done their part in changing the way we live – hopefully for the better.
This week, over US$3.9 billion of funding went into 127 startups, which are all on their own mission to Mars of sorts. As is the norm with the innovation industry, some of these fledgling businesses won’t be around in a few years. But for those that make it, we’ll be here to cover the details of their expeditions.
You can find all the important investment deals that happened in the last few days in our weekly funding news wrap-up.
Let’s dive into the biggest deals and M&As that recently took place.
BIGGEST DEALS BY COUNTRY
🇨🇳 Didi Cargo: The logistics and transportation provider under Chinese giant Didi Chuxing has raised US$1.5 billion in a series A funding round from Biguiyuan, CITIC PE, Temasek Holdings, VMS Investment Group, Yinshan Capital, Yunfeng Capital, and Zhongguancun Longmen Fund.
Lists of most active investors in the region
List of top-funded startups in Asia
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