AInnovation Completes Series C Financing Led by CICC ALPHA and Enters Unicorn Club
AInnovation Completes Series C Financing Led by CICC ALPHA and Enters Unicorn Club
BEIJING, Dec. 20, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — AInnovation recently completed Series C financing, entering the unicorn club. This financing round was led by CICC ALPHA, followed by Guohe Capital and Riverhead Capital. The previous shareholder Huaxing Growth Capital also continued to increase its position. China Renaissance and CICC served as joint financial advisors.
An AI subsidiary of Sinovation Ventures, AInnovation is a next-generation artificial intelligence unicorn that has grown up in this wave of AI industrialization. With a mission of “AI Empowering Business,” AInnovation delivers products and customized business solutions leveraging cutting-edge AI technology, empowering traditional industries to reduce costs, improve their business efficiency and value, and realize digital transformation.
With a two-wheel business model of “technology&products + industry scenarios”, and relying on computer vision and machine learning technology, AInnovation has built three technical platforms: the Manuvision industrial vision platform, MatrixVision video intelligence platform, and Orion automated machine learning platform. On this basis, it provides customers in manufacturing, finance, retail and public services and with AI products and industry solutions that can be quickly delivered and implemented. AInnovation has deeply studied smart manufacturing, and created an “industrial vision-industrial automation-industrial cloud platform” business layout to penetrate specialized verticals, earning recognition from leading customers including CISDI, CTCE Group, CIMC, Zongshen Power, Baowu Steel Group, and Mars.
Hocking Xu, CEO of AInnovation, said, “AInnovation is a banner for commercialization of AI. Since our establishment over two years ago, with a clear strategy of empowerment, infusion and fusion, we’ve realized rapid transformation from technology to commercial value. We’ve established in many cities across the country and improved our talent structure and capacity from five aspects, helping us provide full-stack AI solutions with absolutely efficient execution: technology, products, industry application scenarios, delivery and operation, and commercialization. In the future, we will deeply root ourselves in the industry, from business empowerment to value co-creation, to realize mutual benefit for us, our customers, the industry, and our investors. We welcome technology and commercialization talent to join us to jointly fulfill the mission of our era to use AI to power business.”
Joseph Liang, Managing Director of CICC and Chairman of CICC ALPHA, said, “There is huge potential in traditional industries, which requires activation and catalysis by emerging technologies such as AI to enter a new round of growth. This will create considerable wealth for the world economy. AInnovation is committed to promoting long-term intelligent transformation and upgrade of traditional industries with AI. This conforms to the national science and technology innovation strategy, as well as industry evolution trends, and we are very optimistic about their development prospects.”
Maxwell Zhou, Member of Founding Team and Executive Director of CICC ALPHA, said, “We have witnessed the growth of AInnovation from Series A to Series C, led its Series A, A+, and C financing, and even pursued Series B. Empowerment of traditional industries tests the comprehensive strength of AI companies. The AInnovation team is both fast and resilience. This is the fastest-growing, most innovative AI enterprise with the most business sense that we’ve seen in recent years. We hope that after becoming a unicorn, AInnovation will continue to increase investment in scientific and technological innovation to empower traditional industries using innovative product solutions.”
Song Yi, Partner of Guohe Capital, said, “Guohe Capital focuses on industrial upgrade and scientific and technological innovation. Despite the adverse environment of this year’s epidemic, we have still maintained steady investment, and completed investments in more than 10 high-quality projects this year, including AInnovation. The Guohe team places much value on AInnovation’s business thinking and technological innovation strength, applying AI to power upgrade of traditional industries – especially its ability to solve industry pain points and form standardized products through in-depth exploration of industries. This is in line with our investment strategy and value concept. Guohe firmly believes that AInnovation will become an important force to promote the future upgrade and transformation of China’s traditional industries and continuously create value for society.”
Li Zhenni, Head of Investment in Emerging Industries of Riverhead Capital, said, “Riverhead Capital’s investment philosophy is to invest in the most valuable companies. We have long sought a breakthrough point for application of AI in traditional industries, but high-quality targets with solid AI technology and in-depth understanding of pain points in traditional industries, able to standardize their services and rapidly expand their scale, are very scarce. AInnovation will create great value for upgrade and transformation of traditional industries and social economy, which fits our investment model of ‘most valuable companies’.”
Michael Du , Partner of Huaxing Growth Capital, said, “We’ve always focused on AI. We believe that its in-depth application in various industries, especially manufacturing and finance, is a promising long-term direction. Huaxing Growth Capital led Series B investment in AInnovation last year. Afterwards, we saw its many brilliant achievements in R&D of AI technology, and application of such technology in combination with usage scenarios. We also highly recognize their excellent team. It’s our great pleasure to see that it’s grown into a unicorn less than a year after our investment. It’s also a great honor to continue increasing our investment in its Series C round. I believe that AInnovation will bring us more future surprises.”
Since its establishment in March 2018, AInnovation has completed Angel, A/A+, B, and C rounds of financing, with investors including Sinovation Ventures, CICC ALPHA, Huaxing Growth Capital, Chengwei Capital, Guohe Capital, SAIF, Riverhead Capital, CreditEase and other well-known institutions. In the future, it will further enhance its leading position in AI by powering manufacturing, finance, retail, public services, and other fields, accelerating the pace of AI commercialization.
SOURCE AInnovation
Published at Mon, 21 Dec 2020 02:37:30 +0000
Tencent, Temasek-backed Chinese AI major MiningLamp raises $200m Series E+ round
MiningLamp Technology, a Chinese big data and artificial intelligence (AI) unicorn backed by Tencent and Temasek, announced on Friday the completion of $200 million in a Series E+ round of financing led by Russia-China Investment Fund (RCIF).
Besides the lead investor RCIF, which is a fund created in 2012 by government-backed investment vehicles in Russia and China, MiningLamp’s existing shareholders Tencent and Beijing-based dual-currency fund Hundreds Capital joined the round.
Other investors included Oriental Pearl Media Industry Equity Investment Fund, owned by Chinese media & entertainment firm Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group; Greater Bay Area Homeland Investments; and CITIC Securities Investment, an investment unit of Chinese brokerage firm CITIC Securities.
UOB Venture Management (UOBVM), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore-based United Overseas Bank; Capthrone; and China Sky Global participated in the investment.
Synergies with investors
As part of the investment, MiningLamp will forge “in-depth cooperation” with investors to expand its foothold in the international market and to capture opportunities amid digitalisation across multiple industries worldwide.
“MiningLamp will partner with investors, such as RCIF and UOBVM, to jointly explore opportunities brought by digitalisation in areas like infrastructures, energy, consumption, and finance in Russia and Southeast Asia,” said the firm in a WeChat post.
“Since our previous strategic investment, we have continued to lift our efforts in expanding into the overseas market. We now deliver our intelligent maintenance services, based on integrated big data and data analysis, to Singapore’s MRT,” it added.
Founded in April 2014 with support from early-stage backers like Sequoia Capital China, MiningLamp started as a provider of online ad performance evaluation solutions and fraud detection services.
The firm later expanded its focus to the development of natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and AI-enabled intelligent recognition, recommendation, and marketing solutions for corporate clients in the fields of public security, finance, retail, smart city, and manufacturing, among others.
MiningLamp said that it has delivered its data-driven intelligent solutions to help over 2,000 customers transform and upgrade their businesses. Its customers include Procter & Gamble (P&G); Yum China, the operator of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut restaurants in China; China Construction Bank; Beijing-based insurer China Life Insurance; and city subways across Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
The firm plans to join hands with investors to implement an industry ecosystem strategy, under which it will work with Tencent, CITIC Securities Investment, and Oriental Pearl Media Industry Equity Investment Fund in various areas like smart city, intelligent industry, smart marketing, fintech, and new media.
Greater Bay Area Homeland Investments will help promote MiningLamp’s development and business expansion in China’s Greater Bay Area, said the firm.
The Series E+ round marks Tencent’s fourth investment in Beijing-based MiningLamp. It came about eight months after the Chinese gaming & social networking giant had co-led its $300-million Series E round in March 2020. Singapore’s state-owned investment firm Temasek was another lead investor.
Tencent also led the startup’s 2-billion-yuan Series D round in March 2019, with participation from Huaxing Growth Capital, an investment platform of Hong Kong-listed investment bank China Renaissance; property trust manager AVIC Trust; and Beijing-based Gold Endeavor Capital.
MiningLamp’s 1-billion-yuan Series C round in April 2018 was backed by Tencent and Huaxing Growth Capital.
Published at Mon, 21 Dec 2020 02:15:00 +0000
