Polish Mobile Robot Startup VersaBox Receives Euro 2.5 Million
Warsaw-based robotics startup VersaBox received €2.5 million from VC funds EVC, SpeedUp Energy Innovation, Movens Capital, and RST Ventures for Earth.
Tag: Startups
AI Startup Covariant.ai Building ‘Universal AI for Robots’
Covariant last month secured a US$40 million Series B funding round led by Index Ventures to push its total funding to US$67 million.
Bengio-Backed Startup Korbit Introduces STEM Intelligent Tutoring System
Canadian education technology startup Korbit Technologies has introduced a personalized AI-powered learning experience that it says can help all students learn faster and better in a cost-effective way.
Former Microsoft AI Head Harry Shum Joins Intelligent Local News Startup News Break as Chairman
Former Microsoft executive vice president of Artificial Intelligence and Research Harry Shum (Shen Xiangyang) has been appointed chairman of the board of the Silicon Valley startup News Break.
Synced Machine Intelligence Awards Recognize Innovation: 50 Industry Leaders and 60 Solutions
The Synced Machine Intelligence Awards 2019 focus is on “the power of industry,” and the selection process keyed in on AI products, application cases and industry landings, with choices based on verifiable industry performance.
A Look at China’s Growing Semiconductor Industry
In February Chinese AI semiconductor maker Horizon Robotics raised US$600 million in Series B funding from SK China, SK Hynix and big auto groups, making it the first in its field to reach the staggering valuation of US$3 billion.
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?
Roadstar.ai: The Rise and Fall of a Self-Driving Startup
A year ago, Shenzhen-based self-driving start-up Roadstar.ai was cruising along promisingly. In May 2018 the company announced a US$128 million funding round led by Wu Capital and state-backed Shenzhen Capital Group — one of the largest autonomous driving investments ever in China.
Natural Language Processing in Call Centres
AI-empowered technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) are increasingly active in the labour-intensive world of call centres — concentrated offices used for sending or receiving a large volume of requests by telephone.
California Startup GTI Releases AI Chips to Challenge NVIDIA and Intel
In his 1988 IEEE paper Cellular Neural Networks: Theory, UC Berkeley PhD student Lin Yang proposed Cellular Neural Network theory, a predecessor of the Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) that would later revolutionize machine learning. Based on this theory, Yang blueprinted a 20*20 parallel simulated circuit chip in the university lab.
Shanghai Spawns a New Generation of AI Startups
A typical JD motorcycle deliveryman in Shanghai delivers 100 packages per day, racing along the city’s waterfront, navigating tiny alleyways and darting between the city’s skyscrapers. That may seem impressive but JD is still striving to improve motorcycle delivery efficiency with new tech — much of it AI-powered.
A Chinese VC’s Take on Investing in Autonomous Driving
Synced recently spoke with Delian Capital Senior Vice President Xuesong Fan about the current status of automated driving startups. Fan graduated from Harbin Engineering University and worked for years on Chinese satellite engineering. In 2015 came down to earth, applying his experience to self-driving car investments.
An Overview of China’s Top-Funded AI Startups
From 2015 – 2017 over 450 Chinese AI startups received funding totaling CN¥30 billion (US$4.8 billion). Although the number of funding rounds declined in 2017, the year’s total funding was more than double the total for 2015 and 2016 combined.
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 SenseTime Scores US$600 Million in Funding to Become the World’s Most Valued AI Startup
China’s computer vision company SenseTime today announced it had raised a staggering US$600 million in Series C funding, setting a world record for an AI company and bringing its value to an estimated US$4.5 billion to make it the world’s most valued AI startup.
Lawyee Has Digitized 40 Million Chinese Court Records
Lawyee is a Peking University spinoff founded in 2003 that was one of the first companies specializing in building searchable legal databases and digitizing IT systems for Chinese courts and law firms.
African Fintech Startups Are Revolutionizing Banking
By the end of 2017, there were more than 300 fintech startups across the continent. Disrupt Africa’s Finnovating for Africa: Exploring the African Fintech Startup Ecosystem Report 2017 concludes that African fintech startups’ growth since 2015 has been nothing short of tremendous.
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”).
Fintech Surge: S&P Global Acquires Kensho for Record $550 Million; Ant Financial Launches Pre-IPO Funding
S&P Global has signed an agreement to acquire Kensho, a Cambridge, MA-based AI company that uses data analytics and machine learning algorithms to find correlations and arbitrage opportunities in large-scale financial datasets.
Baidu Drops Lawsuit Against JingChi as the Two Team Up on Self-Driving Tech
Baidu announced today that self-driving startup JingChi has joined its open-source autonomous driving platform Apollo as a cooperative partner. JingChi’s new CEO Tony Han said in a statement, “JingChi is pleased to join Apollo, and is willing to grow fast with Apollo’s help.”
China to Facilitate AI Unicorns’ Going Public
Chinese media is reporting that several domestic brokers and investment banks were recently informed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) that it will relax regulations on prospectus approval time and profitability minimums for Chinese unicorns in the domains of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, biotech, and high-end manufacturing.
Chinese Self-Driving Startup CEO Suddenly Steps Down
Jin Wang, CEO of China’s self-driving startup JingChi, has stepped down just 11 months after founding the company.
JingChi said in a statement that “Jin Wang left the company due to family issues. Despite that, the company remains unchanged.”