Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of May 24, 2021. Extend Raised $260M Series C led by Softbank Vision Fund

Hello from the beautiful sunny San Francisco!  As the “work from home” (WFH) situation continues,  I am moving this week (not to Miami or Austin), but two blocks away to a bigger place.

According to the IMF, the combined GDP of China, Japan, and Korea ($23.81 trillion) has overtook the U.S. ($22.67 trillion) in 2021.


For global companies, building an Asian presence is a must and cannot be ignored.  Instead of treating Asia as a sideshow, they must act on the assumption that success in Asian markets is necessary for survival.

In Asia’s hyper-competitive markets, many global companies face intense competition from low-cost local players (think Uber vs Didi); customers with modest and lower than US incomes, and fragmented distribution channels. The savviest operators are trading their old and centralized management practices— for leaner, faster, more flexible, and regionally collaborative ones. They are strengthening their Asian operations by creating small, fast, and entrepreneurial regional leadership teams.

And this week, I am excited to host some of these entrepreneurial regional leaders from Flexport, WeWork, Airbnb and Airwallex at FoundersHK.  I want to learn their war stories and talk about how they make their mark and compete in Asia. 

Join us for the discussion. 

This week a total of 26 startups raised $1.0778B in funding, 3 exits:

• $296.2M goes to 11 Enterprise startups
• $247.8M goes to 4 FinTech startups
• $78M goes to 2 InsurTech startups
• $2M goes to 1 Legal startup
• $21M goes to 1 Wireless startup
• $4.3M goes to 1 Construction startup
• $10M goes to 1 Energy Management startup
• $70M goes to 1 Marketplace startup
• $25M goes to 1 Healthcare startup
• $63.5M goes to 2 BioTech startups
• $260M goes to 1 Other startup