"Going Global Overseas Weekly" is a series of columns launched by Venture Capital, aiming to select major events, overseas large companies, investment and financing news for entrepreneurs and investors in the field of going global, and this is the 232nd report of the column.
Source丨Venture Bang (ID: ichuangyebang)
Finish丨Zhao Xiaoxiao
This week's (2024.04.08-04.13) major events include: TikTok's divestiture period may be extended to 2025, AliExpress semi-managed online for 100 days, a global strategy for sports headphones, a letter to shareholders from a million-year-old CEO, the first press conference of an overseas advertising platform in China, crowdfunding platform Indiegogo is expanding in the Asia-Pacific region, and Musk's AI startup xAI is seeking $4 billion in financing.
Big event
TikTok's divestiture period may be extended to 2025
On April 10, Maria Cantwell, chair of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, said that lawmakers may extend the deadline to force ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. assets to one year.
Previously, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 352 in favor and 65 against on March 13 to demand that ByteDance divest TiTok's assets in the United States within about six months or face a ban. Cantwell said she supported the idea of extending the deadline to one year.
In Europe, TikTok's growth has slowed, with only 13% of Android devices installed, compared to 37% for Instagram and 59% for Facebook. In order to accelerate the growth of this market, TikTok plans to launch a new app in Germany, Spain, France, etc., internally called Coin App, externally known as TikTok Lite, for users over 18 years old, and provide cash incentives.
In addition, TikTok Notes, an Instagram-based image-sharing app that will allow users to share existing photo posts on the app, which TikTok says is in development, will soon be tested.
AliExpress semi-managed online for 100 days, a large number of merchant orders doubled
AliExpress semi-managed has been online for 100 days, and the latest report card has been posted: last month alone, 20,000 semi-managed merchants have doubled their order growth. At present, semi-custodian has gained a firm foothold and entered a stage of rapid growth.
In the past year, AliExpress has fully upgraded to a hosting-based business model, and Temu, Shein, and Tiktok are also working on the hosting model.
In order to win the market, AliExpress's own investment is also increasing. At the beginning of April, AliExpress issued an announcement announcing that the amount of JIT delivery delay penalty deduction was reduced, from the original 1~2 times to 0.5~1 times the commodity price. Following the upgrade of the "Global 5-Day Delivery Service" and the official announcement of the sponsorship of the 2024 Euro Cup.
Recently, AliExpress was revealed to be preparing for the so-called "No. 1 Project" "10 billion subsidy brand going to sea" plan, the first batch of 1000 places to open, merchants can use full custody, POP semi-custody mode to participate, enjoy the "10 billion subsidy" special support and exclusive channel traffic, there are currently a number of well-known brands and Amazon big sellers settled.
According to the analysis, on the basis of the comprehensive improvement of the supply chain's performance capabilities, AliExpress needs high unit price supply to seek greater growth space, and it is timely to launch a brand overseas plan.
Shokin's globalization landscape
Founded more than ten years ago and without relying on financing, Shokz has become a pioneer in open-back headphones from a foundry of military communication equipment, and occupies a certain market position in the global sports market.
According to the "Independent Market Research Report on the Global In-Ear Open-Back Headphone Industry" and the "Independent Market Research Report on the Global Sports Headphone Industry" released by Sullivan, a global authoritative consulting agency, in 2023, Shokz will rank first in global sales in the two tracks of in-ear open-back headphones and sports headphones. At present, Shokin has successfully deployed in dozens of countries and regions, and settled in more than 28,000 experience outlets around the world.
Rapid growth depends on the market. According to the 2023 statistics of IDC's "China Wireless Headset Market Monthly Tracking Report", the sales volume of the open-back headset market was 6.52 million units, a year-on-year increase of 130.2%, of which bone conduction, earhook and ear clip headphones grew rapidly, becoming the largest growth point of the headphone market. It is understood that the GMV of Shokin Greater China in 2023 will exceed the 1 billion mark for the first time.
On April 12, Shokin released two new sports earphones in Beijing - a new generation of swimming headphones OpenSwim Pro and all-scene sports headphones OpenFit Air. The two new products have better performance in comfort, noise reduction, sound quality, battery life, and waterproof. This year, Shokin has also expanded its product line - four series: swimming triathlon, endurance sports, fitness travel, and communication conferences.
Large overseas companies
Letter to shareholders from the million-year-old CEO
On April 11, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy published his annual shareholder letter, in which he pledged to double down on investments in new growth areas such as artificial intelligence this year, but to try to find ways to control costs. In last year's letter, Jesse also mentioned investing heavily in large models and generative AI.
Over the course of the year, Amazon invested $86.4 billion in R&D of its $574.7 billion annual revenue and $4 billion in Anthropic, the big-model startup behind Claude 3 — Amazon's largest venture capital.
When talking about the pace of AI development this year, Jesse continued to divide into three layers: infrastructure, middle layer, and application. Infrastructure is for developers and companies that want to make big models. In addition to continuing to better adapt Nvidia's hardware and software (since almost all of the best large models are trained on Nvidia chips), Amazon also plans to do more work on building AI chips, and their chips, Trainium and Inferentia, are being used by companies such as Anthropic, Airbnb, Snap, and others.
The middle tier is designed to serve customers who want to customize existing large models with their own data, and Amazon has deployed at least large models such as Anthropic, Meta, Mistral, Stability AI, Cohere, and the Amazon Titan family.
Finally, there is the application layer, including Amazon's AI shopping assistant Rufus, and Jesse thinks that more and more AWS customers will build or extend their AI applications on AWS.
On Thursday, Amazon also added to its board of directors Andrew Ng, a former leader of Google Brain and a former Baidu scientist.
Jesse, who was promoted to CEO of Amazon in 2021, is writing a letter to shareholders for the third time this year, and last year, Jesse's 2023 revenue included an annual salary of $365,000 and about $992,700 in other comprehensive compensation.
From the end of 2022 to the present, Amazon has launched the largest layoff plan in its history, laying off more than 27,000 people. This year, these layoffs have continued, with Amazon announcing layoffs in cloud computing, Prime Video, and Twitch live streaming, among others. This week, some employees of Amazon China also received layoff notice emails from the headquarters.
The first press conference of an overseas advertising platform in China
On April 11, Yandex Ads, an AdTech platform known for its AI search engine, held its first conference in Beijing with the aim of expanding its presence in the Chinese market, where app publishers have performed very well in the past year.
At the conference, Yandex Ad presented its ecosystem of products for app publishers: App Campaigns to drive traffic to apps, and Yandex Advertising Network to increase app revenue through ad monetization. In addition, AppMetrica, a mobile analytics platform, and Easy Monetization, a one-stop solution to help app developers increase ad revenue without having to invest resources in setting up and managing ad mediation platforms.
From left to right: Sergey Ustinov, General Manager, Asia Pacific, Yandex Ads; Ilya Marin, Director of Global Business Development, Yandex Ads
The Russian market has huge potential. Russia's GDP reached $2.2 trillion in 2022, and the GDP growth rate reached 3.6% in 2023 and is expected to maintain this momentum in 2024. The mobile app market, in particular, presents an extremely significant opportunity for app publishers around the world, with 5.6 billion app downloads in 2023 and generating more than $5 billion in app monetization revenue.
The average time spent in apps by Russian users is also higher than the global average: 4 hours and 10 minutes per day, compared to the global average of 1 hour and 25 minutes. Russia ranks among the top 10 global app downloads in the gaming industry, with more than 2 billion downloads across game genres, in-app purchases, and subscriptions, and more than $1.5 billion in game revenue.
Last year, Russia became China's fifth-largest single trading partner, with bilateral trade reaching an all-time high of $240 billion in 2023. According to customs data, China's exports to Russia in 2023 increased by 46.9% year-on-year, and in the first two months of this year, they increased by another 12.5%. Automobiles and consumer electronics are the main items exported. According to the GlobalData automotive industry report, Chinese automakers have a 55% share of the Russian market in 2023.
Yandex Ads, part of the international IT company Yandex, opened an office in Shanghai in 2015, and last year, Yandex Ads achieved 50% annual growth. In Russia, Yandex Ads is the largest search engine platform with a market share of 64%, and more than 80% of the population uses Yandex's services.
Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform, is making a presence in the Asia-Pacific region
Indiegogo, the world's largest launch and crowdfunding platform for new technology and innovation products, officially announced that Cheryl Tang Tiantian has been appointed as Sales Director of the Asia Pacific region, taking over the business development strategy and management of Indiegogo in the Asia Pacific region. The appointment took effect in April.
Prior to joining Indiegogo, Cheryl worked for Servorp, WeWork, New Market and other well-known companies, and has extensive experience in managing multinational teams, specializing in building multi-regional and cross-domain sales management strategies.
Since its inception in 2008, Indiegogo has become the world's largest platform for the launch and crowdfunding of new science and technology products, the first stop for Chinese science and technology enterprises to build global brands, and released more than 900,000 projects to 15 million supporters in 238 countries or regions around the world, with a total amount of more than 2.6 billion US dollars. At the beginning of this year, Indiegogo's Greater China office moved to Qianhai, Shenzhen.
Investment and financing
Paixun, a full-process intelligent warehousing and logistics solution provider, completed a strategic financing of over 100 million yuan
Paixun Intelligence recently completed two rounds of strategic financing of over 100 million yuan, and the investors are Anhui State-controlled Investment and Chuanggu Capital. This round of funds will be used for technology research and development in advanced manufacturing fields such as semiconductors and new energy, the introduction of high-end talents, the construction of intelligent manufacturing bases and the development of global markets.
Founded in 2014, Paixun Intelligence mainly provides intelligent factory overall solutions for advanced manufacturing enterprises such as electronic manufacturing, semiconductors, and new energy with robotics + AI and other technologies. At present, the industry served by Paixun Intelligent has covered electronic manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, rail transit, power and electrical, semiconductor, logistics integration, new energy and other fields.
In 2023, the overall revenue of Paixun Intelligence will maintain a growth of more than 50%, and an international headquarters will be established in Singapore, and the project has landed in more than 20 countries and regions around the world, such as the United States, Malaysia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Japan.
Shanghai Helium Dolphin Cofe+ Coffee Robot completed the first round of financing in Series A
Recently, Shanghai Helium Dolphin Robot Technology Co., Ltd., an artificial intelligence company in the coffee industry, officially announced the completion of the first round of financing in the A round, which was led by the famous investor Yu Fangbiao.
Founded in 2018, Shanghai Helium Dolphin is an artificial intelligence and Internet + enterprise in Shanghai, the company develops and manufactures a series of new AI products such as cofe + fully intelligent robot freshly ground coffee kiosk, robot freshly ground coffee bar, robot freshly ground coffee table, and street corner robot freshly ground café, at present, cofe+ robot coffee kiosk has been reversely exported to dozens of developed countries such as the United States, Canada, Europe, Oceania, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other central units of China and 15 provinces and cities.
Musk's AI startup, xAI, is seeking $4 billion in funding
Elon Musk's fledgling artificial intelligence startup xAI is seeking $3 billion to $4 billion in funding, which could be valued at $18 billion, according to information sent to investors. However, the terms and dollar value of this round are still moving and are subject to change.
xAI highlighted its potential selling point to investors – promoting Musk's performance at Tesla and SpaceX, noting that xAI will be able to train AI using high-quality data from Musk's social network x. Large language models empower AI chatbots, and access to data is critical to building large language models. xAI wants to compete with well-funded companies like OpenAI in this space.
Singapore-based AI startup Mindverse has closed a US$5 million funding round
On April 11, Singapore-based AI company Mindverse closed a $5 million seed round led by SquarePeg. Mindverse will use the funding from this round to further research and product development to advance its large-scale personalization models.
Mindverse was founded in 2022 by former Meta executives and AI researchers. Its flagship products include MindOS Studio, an AI-native website that helps create personalized chat experiences and interfaces, and Mebot, a productivity tool that learns and remembers users' thoughts and preferences.
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