Asia

Australian venture capital firm Blackbird said Wednesday it has raised Australia’s largest venture capital fund at just over AUD$1 billion ($640 million) in committed capital. The fund, consisting of a AUD$284 million ($180.77 million) core fund, AUD$668 million ($425.2 million) follow-on fund and NZ$75 million ($43.76 million) dedicated New Zealand fund.

Petronas, Accenture and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are collaborating to evaluate commercialisation opportunities globally for the cloud-based logistics solution and services platform STEAR.

South Korean travel tech startup Globaleur has raised $2.5 million in their pre-series A round and recently completed setting up an office in Singapore as part of their expansion plans for South East Asia.

In the interview, Bhanu also elaborates on its plans after raising funds and the firm’s ambition in the longer term. He, however, declined to comment on the company's financials and fundraising plans.

Singapore and Hong Kong lead green fintech development among the five economies in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), a report said Friday. Both Hong Kong and Singapore are in the stage of scaling up and accelerating to mature levels in terms of green fintech development compared to the past two years.

Poly reimagines the future of work with its suite of solutions designed to deliver immersive meeting experiences across Google Meet, Google Voice, and Chromebooks.

Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based company advancing digital property rights for gaming and the open metaverse, and its subsidiary TinyTap, the platform for user-generated educational games, announced Thursday the launch of Publisher non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Q9 Capital, a Hong Kong-based crypto investment platform, announced Thursdasy that it has received a provisional virtual asset (VA) approval from Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) as it expands into the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and applies for the full operating license in accordance with VARA requirements.

Global fintech firm Stripe announced Thursday the launch of its services in Thailand. The launch expands Stripe’s investment in Asia Pacific where its services are available to support businesses in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand.