<article>South Korea&#8217;s AIM has raised $1.6 million seed investment while Japan&#8217;s Xtreme Design and Credit Engine have secured funding.</article>

South Korea&#8217;s AIM has raised $1.6 million seed investment while Japan&#8217;s Xtreme Design and Credit Engine have secured funding.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">AIM raises $1.6m seed</h3>
Seoul-based fintech startup <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://getaim.co/#/home/" target="_blank">AIM</a>, which provides an automated investment solution, has closed $1.6 million in seed funding with participation from DT&amp;I, Soorim, Seoul Business Agency, and <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/startupbootcamp" target="_blank">Startup Bootcamp</a>.
The development was <a style="color: #000080;" href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/31/koreas-aim-raises-1-6m-for-its-mobile-trading-service/" target="_blank">reported</a> by TechCrunch. The firm is looking at expanding to Singapore and “potentially” add one more location in H2 2017, according to AIM CEO and co-Founder Jenna Lee. She said, “We’re thinking about regional expansion and want to build a playbook for international financial services.”
The venture aims to democratise financial services by having a systems that enables users to conduct trades and investments over a smartphone.
AIM streamlines the process through outsourcing trades and investments to brokers, which covers licensing and compliance matters. Currently, in an open beta, Lee claims there are more than 4000 users with about $166 million in assets waiting to use the service.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Xtreme Design raises $610k pre-Series A</h3>
Tokyo-based <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://xd-lab.net/" target="_blank">Xtreme Design</a>, a startup that offers a cloud-based virtual supercomputing on-demand service called <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://xd-lab.net/dna/" target="_blank">Xtreme DNA</a>, disclosed that it had raised 700,000 yen (~$610,000) in its pre-series A round in a Tuesday announcement.
The round was led by <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=381288677" target="_blank">Freebit Investment</a> and includes individual investors. This latest investment follows a seed round it raised of 30 million yen (~ $260,000) in January and March 2016 from its  founders and angel investors.
Freebit Investments is a subsidiary of a <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://freebit.com/en/" target="_blank">Freebit</a>, which is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is engaged in the business of providing IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).
The company provides an automated service for conducting operations monitoring to optimise system utilisation of supercomputers. This is achieved through deploying virtual supercomputers on the cloud and has been attracting attention from enterprise users due to its role in IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) applications.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Credit Engine closes seed round</h3>
Tokyo-based fintech startup <a style="color: #000080;" href="https://www.creditengine.jp/" target="_blank">Credit Engine</a>, which operates online loan service <a style="color: #000080;" href="https://www.lendy.jp/" target="_blank">Lendy</a>, has raised 110 million yen (~$970,000 US) in a seed round. This follows the venture raising 50 million yen (~$440,000) from <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/draper-nexus-ventures" target="_blank">Draper Nexus Ventures</a> and Tokyo-listed <a style="color: #000080;" href="https://voyagegroup.com/en/" target="_blank">Voyage Group</a> in September  2016.
Following Japan&#8217;s Financial Services Agency issuance of a business license for lending money &#8211; necessary for their business development &#8211; they also secured 60 million yen (~$530,000 ) from <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/500-startups" target="_blank">500 Startups</a> and  <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://500startups.jp/?lang=en">500 Startups Japan</a> as well as Freebit Investment, the investment arm of Japanese Internet service provider Freebit.
According to a <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://thebridge.jp/en/2017/02/credit-engine-seed-funding" target="_blank">report</a> from The Bridge, these investments qualify as seed rounds, making this investment an extended seed and brings aggregate equity funding raised to an estimated $1.94 million.
Credit Engine was founded in July 2016 by CEO Seiichiro Uchiyama and CFO Tatsuki Inoue and operates as neo-bank.  Its online loan service Lendy aims to provide rapid financing to individual business owners and SMEs (small &amp; medium enterprises) can access funds.
Currently, Lendy caters to restaurants, barber shops, hair salons, online shop operators, with a planned average loan amount per customer being 1.5 million yen (~$13,000) and up to a maximum of 10 million yen (~$88,000 US).
Also Read:
<a style="color: #ff0000;" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/63966-63966/">SFA-polytechnic partnership has implications for female roles in Singapore fintech</a>
<a style="color: #ff0000;" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/63718-63718/">Japanese investors back Canadian VC Pangaea Ventures’ $80m fourth fund</a>
<a style="color: #ff0000;" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/enechange-opt-ventures-imj-63377/">Japan: Enechange raises $4.4m from Opt Ventures &amp; IMJ</a>

South Korea's AIM raises a $1.6m seed investment while in Japan Xtreme Design and Credit Engine have secured funding. 

Asia VC Roundup: AIM, Xtreme Design and Credit Engine raise capital

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