Chinese NFT startup Bigverse has announced the completion of a Series A led by CapitalNuts, raising more than RMB 10 million ($1.6 million). Founded in 2021, Hangzhou-based Bigverse focuses on metaverse services and NFTs. The company launched an NFT arts platform last year and quickly garnered more than 300,000 registered users. The total amount of transactions on the platform has already exceeded RMB 22 million, according to the firm’s official website. [36Kr, in Chinese]

Ecarx, an in-car software system supplier backed by Geely and Baidu, is weighing up a merger with a US-listed special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that could value it at as much as $4 billion, Bloomberg reported Wednesday citing people with knowledge of the matter. The company also plans to reach out to Chinese regulators over approval for the potential deal the sources said, following new rules introduced in December to extend government oversight of offshore listings by Chinese firms. Co-founded by Geely chairman Li Shufu, Geely raised $194 million in a Series A led by Baidu in late 2020. [Bloomberg]

JD Logistics, a logistics and supply chain spin-off from online retailer JD, has acquired rival courier Deppon Express, Chinese local media outlet Xinyan Finance reported on Tuesday. Screenshots of an internal announcement show that Cui Weixing, chairman and general manager of Deppon Express, announced the news internally on Feb. 28, according to the report. The story adds that JD will take over the company after Cui’s exit. The news comes two months after a similar acquisition rumor surfaced in January of this year, which Deppon denied at the time. This could be the second deal that JD has sealed in the logistics services industry this year, in addition to a $546 million share in on-demand courier Dada Nexus that was announced on Feb. 28. After a fierce price war, China’s express and logistics industry is now undergoing a market consolidation whereby small players have begun merging with giant competitors. [Xinyan Finance]

Alibaba-backed food delivery giant announced Wednesday that it will allocate an initial fund of RMB 20 million ($3 million) to help alleviate the operational pressures merchants have faced as a result of China’s pandemic prevention measures. The proceeds will be distributed in the form of cash commission reimbursements to merchants in areas that were deemed mid- and high-risk in the first two months of this year. All the reimbursement transactions will be completed before the end of April, the company said. ’s move comes one day after rival Meituan announced similar measures to help businesses impacted by Covid regulations. The two Chinese food delivery giants are heeding last month’s call from regulators for tech platforms to cut fees for restaurants suffering amid ongoing coronavirus outbreaks. [NetEase, in Chinese]

Baidu is teaming up with BYD to provide the auto giant with automated driving software to be used in multiple popular BYD models, Baidu CEO Robin Li said on Tuesday during his company’s Q4 2021 earnings call. BYD plans to adopt Baidu’s Apollo Navigation Pilot assisted driving software, which enables hands-free driving on highways, and its AVP autonomous parking system, Li revealed, without giving further details. Best-known for its search engine, Baidu is also developing electric vehicles in partnership with automaker Geely and plans to begin mass production of its first model in 2023. [Baidu earnings call transcript]

US-listed Chinese electric vehicle makers provided updates on their delivery figures for February on Tuesday, with Li Auto taking the top spot ahead of Xpeng Motors, while Nio slipped to third place. Li Auto posted deliveries of 8,414 vehicles, an increase of about 266% year on year but a 31% sequential decline on the previous month, which the Meituan-backed EV maker blamed on supply chain and production challenges in part caused by the Lunar New Year holiday and new outbreaks of Covid infections. Xpeng Motors and Nio delivered 6,225 and 6,131 EVs last month respectively. [Li Auto release]

ByteDance and Qualcomm have entered into a partnership to develop extended reality (XR) technologies, covering virtual, augmented and mixed reality. Pico Interactive, the Chinese virtual reality startup ByteDance purchased in August, will be the basis for the TikTok-owner to make its forays into the space. Pico’s XR products will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces, the chip maker’s developer program for extended reality app development. Qualcomm is cooperating with several companies including Meta’s Oculus in order to cement its fundamental role in the XR and metaverse sector. [TechCrunch]

TikTok, the popular short video app owned by ByteDance, is expanding the maximum length of videos on its platform to 10 minutes. The app previously upped the maximum length of videos from 60 seconds to three minutes in 2021. According to a release from TikTok, the app reached 1 billion monthly active users on Sep 27, 2021. The move to longer videos increases the competition between TikTok and YouTube, with the latter launching its own short video platform, YouTube Shorts, in July 2021. [The Verge]

Chinese self-driving truck startup Inceptio announced on Monday that it raised $188 million in a Series B+ which was co-led by Sequoia Capital China and Lenovo’s corporate venture capital arm, Legend Capital. Inceptio also said that it started mass production of heavy-duty trucks with semi-autonomous driving functions with an unnamed Chinese automaker late last year. An undisclosed number of heavy-duty trucks equipped with Inceptio’s technology have been deployed for daily commercial operations with safety drivers on Chinese highways. Existing investors, Meituan and Nio Capital, also participated in the financing. [Inceptio release]