Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of November 16, 2020. Nuro Raised $500M Series C led by T. Rowe Price

Ant Group IPO - the world's biggest listing that didn't happen.

Ant was just two days away from listing on both the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets in a record $37 billion with a valuation of $316 billion. Then, Chinese regulators halted and postponed the IPO, the spin-off of Alibaba's Alipay mobile payment giant.  It appears that the main reason was a speech by Jack Ma that was insufficiently respectful of regulators.

Then on November 3, Chinese regulators published a paper tightening the rules for the country’s micro-lending business.  All micro-lenders will be required to fund at least 30% of any loan they fund jointly with banks. Only 2% of the loans Ant had facilitated as of end-June were on its balance sheet as its IPO prospectus showed.  Ant Group and Lufax are the two online wealth management platforms in China that will be greatly impacted.

How will these rules impact the overall micro-lending and fintech business in China?

Do you think the Ant Group will be relisted in 2021 in China or the US?

I will definitely ask Melissa C. Guzy, founding partner at Arbor Ventures (investor of Lufax) these questions on Monday, November 16, at 5 pm PST.  Join us at this FoundersHK's fundraising zoom conversation.

Sign up here

This week a total of 10 startups raised $730.8M in funding, 3 M&As:

• $38.3M goes to 4 Enterprise startups
• $17M goes to 1 FinTech startup
• $6M goes to 1 Marketplace startup
• $165M goes to 2 Healthcare startups
• $4.5M goes to 1 BioTech startup
• $500M goes to 1 Autonomous Vehicle startup