Former Baidu Research Director's AI Startup Aibee Lands RMB 165 Mln Angel Round
Sina Tech, 1/16/18
Beijing-based Aibee Intelligent Technology, the AI industry solutions firm founded by Lin Yuanqing, former director at Chinese internet conglomerate Baidu's (Nasdaq: BIDU) Baidu Research Institute, recently announced completion of RMB 165 mln in angel funding led by Fosun Kinzon Capital with participation by VCs and individual investors including ZhenFund, China Growth Capital, China Renaissance K2 Ventures (K2VC), Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group, Sequoia Capital, Yonghua Capital and Horizon Robotics.
Aibee also said that Dr. Silvio Savarese, an assistant professor at Stanford University's computer science department, will join the company in an important leadership role to lead technology and product development.
Aibee's commercial model differs from conventional approaches centered on providing business services through development of individual technologies. Instead, the company integrates multiple AI technologies such as computer vision, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and big data-based suggestion and prediction technologies to offer complete solutions that help to upgrade traditional industry capabilities.
Lin Yuanqing said that funds will mainly be used to recruit staff for research teams in Beijing and Silicon Valley and for research platform development. In 2018, the company plans to focus on the offline retail, education, and finance industry domains. Lin also revealed that the company is in the process of partnering with a leading offline retail enterprise, and that this customer expects Aibee's AI solutions to generate more than RMB 1 bln in value annually.
Editor's Note: For more information on this topic, please see AI Startup Founded by Former Head of Baidu Deep Learning Institute Wins Angel Funding, MD 12/01/17 issue.
Keywords: Silvio Savarese HR Horizon Robotics M&A hardware funding software Sequoia Capital Yonghua Capital China Renaissance K2 Ventures ZhenFund angel funding China Growth Capital artificial intelligence Fosun Kinzon Lenovo Capital Lin Yuanqing computer vision AiBee VC
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