Waterdrop Inc raised $ 230 million in funding led by Swiss Re (SWX: SREN) and Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings (HKG: 0700). Existing investors including IDG Capital and Wisdom Choice Global Fund also participated.
Ant Group, the holding company for Alipay, the mobile payment service with over 1 billion users, reported a solid streak of profitability during the first six months of 2020. The Jack Ma controlled company earned about 9.1 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) of profit in the recent June quarter and 15.3 billion yuan ($2.2 billion) in the preceding March quarter. These numbers have been derived from the results for the June quarter declared by Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA), which holds 33% of Ant Group.
The Bank of Korea has commissioned a legal task force to assess regulatory roadblocks for the issue of a South Korean central bank digital currency (CBDC). Last February, the Korean central bank had set up a research team to look into the possibility of a digital currency and assess moves in this regard by other central banks. That move was reportedly triggered by Chinese advances towards a digital yuan, including a pilot test. It may be recalled that the Bank of Korea said on December 1 that “we are considering issuing digital currency (CBDC).”
China Merchant’s Port (HKG: 0144), the country’s largest port operator, is collaborating with Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA), and its subsidiary, Ant Financial to develop a distributed ledger technology (DLT), or blockchain platform.
China’s military is developing 6G internet to power an AI army of the future. Mobile 6G (sixth generation) technology is 10X faster than 5G, which in turn has 10 times the transmission speeds from the widely used 4G. The 6G technology is far superior to 5G and is said to have immense potential for military applications, especially AI-related. Since November, China has two teams working on 6G and is spending billions to make its military a cyber-force.