Self-driving trucking startup PlusAI Inc. raised $200 million in fresh capital from investors including several top-tier Silicon Valley venture-capital firms as well as a Chinese investment firm and automotive companies. The funding will help the Cupertino, Calif.-based startup as it begins mass production of its self-driving systems this year and aims to fill thousands of preorders from Chinese fleets in a joint effort with Chinese truck manufacturer FAW Jiefang, part of state-owned FAW Group, Plus Chief Executive and co-founder David Liu said. Plus will also use the capital to increase production for commercial shipments this year in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. The funding comes as investors have fueled competitors in the autonomous vehicle sector while a crop of smaller self-driving startups stumbled last year amid the pandemic. Financing for the capital intensive sector has increasingly consolidated behind a select few as timelines for mass commercial implementation of the technology have been pushed out in recent years.

WASHINGTON--A U.S. national security panel has ordered the breakup of a joint venture formed between Chinese investors and a California firm that makes exoskeletons, robotic devices that can help disabled people walk but can also help soldiers carry heavy loads. In an announcement Wednesday, Ekso Bionics Holdings Inc. said that panelists on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which reviews deals that threaten the country's national security, are requiring the company to end its joint-venture with its Chinese business...

Serial entrepreneur, Gurbaksh Chahal, is no stranger to success. Having established multiple successful businesses in the past, he is now concentrating efforts on his latest company, RedLotus. Chahal had previously founded Click Agents, Blue Lithium, and Radium One, which all have had exits worth over $400 million. He has now set his sights on further growing RedLotus, which has built an advanced customer data platform, powered by patented AI technology. According to TechCircle, Chahal is set to raise up to $50 million for his current venture.

BUYER'S remorse is often experienced in Silicon Valley by investors who plough money into risky startups only to see them fail. Some technology entrepreneurs are now suffering from seller's remorse. They are those whose young companies have grown big in part thanks to Chinese financial backing, but now feel under scrutiny because of an escalating fight between the two tech superpowers. One entrepreneur who took money from Danhua Capital, a Chinese venture-capital firm based near Stanford University, for example, only recently learned that the firm was established with help and funding from China's government. If there are issues down the line you may not know who you're dealing with," he laments. Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. In coming days President Donald Trump is expected to sign into effect the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernisation Act (FIRRMA), which establishes more vigilant reviews of foreign investments into American companies, ...

China has already taken a significant step into Germany. In the Rheinhausen district of Duisburg, trains are now rolling across the site where steelworkers once fought unsuccessfully to save their mill in 1987 while shipyard cranes stack up containers on the banks of the Rhine River. This is the precise point where the New Silk Road, China's massive infrastructure project, comes to an end. The site in Duisburg is known as Logport I and it is one of the largest container ports in Europe. Twenty-five trains arrive each week at Terminal DIT, also known as the China Terminal, after having traveled the more than 10,000 kilometers from Chongqing across Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland. Four years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the inland port.

In this interview, Hone Capital managing partner Veronica Wu describes how her team uses a data-analytics model to make better investment decisions in early-stage start-ups. Veronica Wu has been in on the ground floor for many of the dramatic technology shifts that have defined the past 20 years. Beijing-born and US-educated, Wu has worked in top strategy roles at a string of major US tech companies--Apple, Motorola, and Tesla--in their Chinese operations. In 2015, she was brought on as a managing partner to lead Hone Capital (formerly CSC Venture Capital), the Silicon Valley–based arm of one of the largest venture-capital and private-equity firms in China, CSC Group. She has quickly established Hone Capital as an active player in the Valley, most notably with a $400 million commitment to invest in start-ups that raise funding on AngelList, a technology platform for seed-stage investing.

American Mark Pavlyukovskyy created a company that provides materials people can use to build their own computer. Last year, when he was searching for people to invest in his company, he wanted someone who knew the Chinese market. Pavlyukovskyy did not have to travel to Beijing or Shanghai to find people knowledgeable about China. Silicon Valley in California is home to many Chinese with money to invest in small or start-up businesses. Pavlyukovskyy was born in Ukraine.

The Chinese are coming and they're hungry for games companies. They need new content to feed their 560 million avid gamers, who contribute to the biggest gaming market in the world - worth an estimated $24.4bn (£19.8bn) in 2016, according to Newzoo. Chinese firms have already spent more than $111bn on foreign acquisitions this year, according to Dealogic, with some of the biggest deals involving gaming companies. Internet giant Tencent - which owns the WeChat and QQ Games platforms - bought Finnish Clash of Clans mobile games maker Supercell for $8.6bn earlier this year. Tencent already owns League of Legends maker Riot Games, and has minority stakes in Epic Games and Activision Blizzard, the World of Warcraft maker.

Author's Note: This article is a part of a series about "China & Israel's Interaction in Business". The past decade has seen both China and Israel doing exceptionally well in the business sector. Israel, the dubbed "Startup Nation", has had its startup ecosystem bloom and flourish in recent years with an incredible 69% growth from 2014 to 2015 alone. Meanwhile, China has been busy living out the business world's version of the "Cinderella" story, transitioning in under 30 years from an oppressed and bullied nation with high poverty rates to becoming one of the leading economic capitals of the world. Naturally, the shared success and prowess of both countries in their respective fields has caught the other's eye, and has birthed a love story of sorts between Israeli entrepreneurs and Chinese investors who share a mutual interest for the other's trade.