Chinese EV Manufacturer XPeng Heads in R&D for Owned Self-Driving Chips
On April 7, media reports show that China’s top-tier electric vehicle manufacturer, XPeng or Xiaopeng Motors, has commenced R&D for owned self-driving chips.
Category: Emerging Company
Highlighting machine intelligence companies on the rise.
Qualcomm AI Maps DL to Quantum Computer via Quantum Field Theory
A team from Qualcomm AI proposes the direct mapping of a deep neural network onto an optical quantum computer through the language of quantum field theory, paving the way for the future development of novel quantum neural network architectures.
Scania and TuSimple Pilot Self-Driving Trucks in Sweden
Scania, the Swedish manufacturer of heavy lorries, trucks and buses, is testing L4 level self-driving trucks on the E4 motorway between Södertälje and Jönköping, in collaboration with San Diego-based company TuSimple.
Canadian Agritech Startup Farmers Edge Inc. Files IPO to Raise CAD 100 Million
Farmers Edge Inc, an AI startup to help growers increase crop yields, plans to go public on Canada’s largest Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “FDGE”.
Self-Driving Truck Unicorn TuSimple Eyes Upcoming IPO Possibilities in the United States
TuSimple has submitted listing documents and plans to list in the United States as early as next month.
Quicktron Accelerates Global Expansion After C Round Financing as Human Touch-Free Approach Gains Traction in Logistics
Quicktron completed a new C+ financing round led by KION Group and Prosperity7 Ventures, and proceeds will be used for global market expansion and further technical development.
Chinese AI Voice Recognition Star Unisound Withdraws IPO Request Three Months After Application
On February 19, Beijing-based AI startup Unisound has decided halted its IPO application to the Shanghai Stalk Exchange.
Daimler Subsidiary Torc Robotics Adopts Amazon Cloud to Develop Autonomous Driving
Torc Robotics has selected Amazon Cloud Services (AWS) as its cloud service provider to meet large-scale data transmission, storage and computing speed requirements.
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Chinese AI Chip Maker Horizon Robotics Bags USD 9M for Series C
According to statement on February 12, Chinese AI chip unicorn Horizon Robotics announces a third time series C financing.
Swiss Fragrance Giant Givaudan Acquires French AI Startup Myrissi
As part of the long-term strategy to “expand AI capabilities”, Swiss flavours and fragrance giant Givaudan announced that it will acquire the French company Myrissi.
Chinese AI Firm 4Paradigm Raises $700M for Series D
On January 22, Beijing-based AI firm 4Paradigm announced USD 700 million series D investments from Boyu Capital, Primavera Capital and Hopu Investments.
Kenyan-Developed APP Utilizes ML to Predicate the Migration and Breeding of Locusts
Kuzi is using satellite data, soil sensor data, ground meteorological observation and machine learning technology trained on predict the locusts’ breeding, appearance and migration routes.
Direct and Star in Your Own Movie With California AI Startup Rct Studio
Interactive movies are redefining cinema and storytelling and opening up a world of possibilities in the entertainment industry. There are no “spoilers” for films with no predetermined endings, whose characters and plots develop based on viewers’ real-time direction. Now, what if these viewers became characters?
Can a Canadian AI Startup Challenge Google in AutoML?
Enter DarwinAI, a Waterloo, Ontario based AI startup which recently released a beta version of an automated machine learning solution it says can generate models ten times more efficiently than comparable state-of-the-art solutions.
Adaptive Learning Startup Squirrel AI Raises CN¥1B
This August, thousands of Chinese middle school students participated in a two-day “AI teacher vs. Human teacher” competition. Students were separated into two groups: one received math tutoring from experienced teachers, the other from an intelligent learning system.
Meet California Startup Voicera’s AI Stenographer
California-based Voicera recently came out of beta and introduced their Enterprise Virtual Assistant (“Eva”), a note-taking AI bot that automatically detects and marks a conference call’s important moments and extracts highlights from the call.
Building DIY Human Action Detectors With Matroid
Computers are now excellent at recognizing images of human faces, cats and dogs — but struggle when it comes to detecting continuous actions, for example determining if a character in a video might be “dancing the tango.” Computers also fall short in detecting nuanced expressions of human emotions.
Suiyuan Technology Gets $50M to Build Cloud-Based Deep Learning Chips
Chinese AI maker startup Suiyuan Technology announced today that it has completed its Series Pre-A funding with nearly CN¥340 million (US$50 million). Funding was led by Tencent Holdings Ltd, Zhen Fund, Delta Capital, Yunhe Partners and Summitview Capital.
Tianrang Intelligence Gets $26 Million in Series A Funding
Shanghai-based Tianrang Intelligence announced today that it has secured over US$26 million in Series A funding led by CMB International Capital and Gaorong Capital, with Ziniu Fund and Wacai Technology also participating. The two-year-old startup is working on general artificial intelligence solutions and will use the new funding to create a “City Brain Lab.”
EV Startup Xpeng Gets CN¥4 Billion in Series B+
Guangzhou-based Xiaopeng Motors (Xpeng) announced today that it had scored CN¥4 billion (US$585 million) in its Series B+ funding round. This is the largest 2018 single-round funding total among Chinese Electric Vehicle startups (NIO, Byton, WM Motor, etc.), and pushes Xpeng’s valuation to CN¥25 billion (US$3.66 billion).
Tuya Smart Gets $200M for its Smart Home, Smart Business & Smart City Strategy
Chinese IoT startup Tuya Smart has completed its Series C funding with nearly US$200 million, led by Future Fund, NEA, China Broadband Capital, Quadrille Capital and C.M.Capital. The company will apply the funds to its AI+IoT, Smart City, Smart Business and Smart Home technologies.
Exploring Human-computer Interaction Startup Rokid’s Jungle
Four years after its founding, human-computer interaction and robotics company Rokid held its first major press conference on June 26 in Hangzhou. Dubbed “Rokid Jungle,” Founder and CEO Misa Zhu quipped that the presser was “a combination of Google IO and Apple WWDC.”
D.C. Startup Foundry.ai Provides Practical ML Solutions for Big Business
Founded in 2016, Foundry.ai provides cloud-based AI-powered software applications for C-Suite executives, particularly those with Forbes Global 2000 companies.
FPGA-Maker Xilinx Buys Chinese Chip Startup DeePhi Tech
Xilinx, the world’s leading designer and supplier of programmable logic devices, today announced its acquisition of DeePhi Tech — a Beijing-based chip startup with a focus on machine learning, specializing in deep compression, pruning, and system-level optimization for neural networks.
Computer Vision Startup Yitu Nabs $100 Million in Funding
Shanghai-based computer vision company Yitu announced today that it has acquired an additional US$100 million in funding, with China Industrial Asset Management as the sole investor this round.
Innoviz Envisions Mass Produced Self-Driving Cars With Solid State LiDAR
Innoviz is a two-year-old Israeli provider of LiDAR remote sensing solutions. The company took a leap forward in the solid state LiDAR field recently by scoring a couple of important partnerships: BMW chose solid-state Innoviz LiDAR sensors and computer vision tech to enable its Level 3-5 autonomous vehicles in April…
Self-Driving Startup Pony.ai Raises Another $102 Million
Chinese autonomous driving solution provider Pony.ai has reported an additional US$102 million in Series A1 funding — just six months after scoring US$112 million — to bring its Series A total to US$214 million.
Former Marvell CTO’s Startup Innogrit Develops “In-Storage Computing”
In the drive to unleash the full potential of artificial intelligence, data transmission has thus far been mostly overlooked. It was not viewed as a serious issue until the recent rise of AI ratcheted up demand for data processing.
Seemmo Sees More: Identifies 28,000 Distinct Vehicle Types on Chinese Roads
At the recent youth and technology themed 2050 Conference in Hangzhou, Seemmo CTO Jianhui Wang delivered a talk called The Survival Guide for AI Companies.
Seattle’s OneClick.ai — Bringing AI a Click Closer
OneClick.ai, a startup founded by two former Microsoft engineers in Seattle, is on a mission to make AI more accessible to businesses. “We design, build and deploy custom AI models as a scalable API that can be accessed from anywhere. Just prepare your data, and we’ll take care of the rest,” says co-founder and CTO Ning Jiang.
Data Search Platform TianYanCha Knows Chinese Businesses
A business data search firm is bombarding China’s subways and business centres with ads. TianYanCha — literally SkyEye Search — has become the “go to” source for governments, consulting agencies, legal service providers, and media outlets who want to perform comprehensive business background checks.
Microsoft Partner ROOBO: Cute Robots, Smart Conferencing, AI Platform
Founded in 2014, ROOBO received US$100 million in Series A financing from iFlytek, and in September 2017 announced B Round financing of US$53 million led by Seven Seas Capital.
Chinese Chip Giant Cambricon Closes Series B With Valuation of $2.5 Billion
Cambricon Technologies announced today that it has secured hundreds of million dollars in its Series B funding round, with investments from China’s State-owned Capital Venture, SDIC Venture Capital, China Capital Investment Group, TCL Capital, CITIC Securities, Alibaba VC, Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group and others.
LexSet’s AI-Powered Interior Designer
New York-based AI startup LexSet.ai wants to make furniture shopping as simple and fun as playing a kid’s video game, with an AI-powered plug-in interior designer that “analyzes your home…
UBTECH Robotics Gets US$820 Million Funding; Becomes the World’s Most Valuable AI Startup
Chinese AI and humanoid robotic company UBTECH Robotics today announced a staggering US$820 million in Series C funding. With its new estimated value of US$5 billion, Shenzhen City-based UBTECH becomes the world’s most valuable AI startup.
AccutarBio Advances AI in Drug Discovery
In December 2017 Chinese pharma tech startup AccutarBio raised US$15 million from IDG Capital, YITU Tech, and ZhenFund.
China’s Yitu Battles for Position in Huge Facial Recognition Market
Founded by two Chinese AI experts in 2012, the company is particularly competent in recognizing human faces and vehicles. Such capability appeals to China’s public security departments.
Mapbox Is Mapping the Future
Mapbox, a San Francisco-based digital mapping startup, released its Mapbox AR at the Mobile World Conference 2018 in Barcelona. The AR platform comprises a suite of tools, a low-level AR core kit, and a framework.
Paige.AI Combats Cancer With AI and Computational Pathology
Paige.AI is a New York-based startup that fights cancer with AI. Launched last month as a spinoff from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) — the largest cancer research institute in the US — Paige.AI has exclusive access to MSK’s IP in the field of computational pathology as well as its dataset of 25 million pathology cancer images (“slides”).
DataVisor Uses Unsupervised Learning to Combat Online Fraud
DataVisor is a Mountain View, California based anti-fraud startup that uses AI to detect fake accounts, prevent money laundering, and protect financial institutions from credit scams. The company offers clients its DataVisor APIs for real-time data connection, and a specialized UI for direct results.