China's Advantech leads $15m round for AI start-up

China's Tencent Holdings, Northern Light Venture Capital and Oriza Ventures also participated in the round, according to a release. 

Petuum was founded by Eric Xing, a professor and associate head of research in the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University. It aims to build a next generation AI and ML platform for deep learning, predictive analytics, knowledge extraction and content summarization. Through its platform, Petuum can process and integrate data such as social media, consumer profiles, electronic healthcare records and sensor logs.

Petuum claims to be 10 to 100 times more efficient than other AI and ML solutions, enabling multiple programs to run in a hardware platform at the same time. The latest funding will be used to technology development, with a view to eliminating barriers that obstruct AI and ML deployments.

New Horizon was set up in 2005 by Winston Wen, son of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, and Jianming Yu. Last year it emerged that New Horizon would be restructured and launch two funds: Advantech, which focuses on growth capital investments in technology, media and telecom and healthcare; and Redview Capital, a traditional growth vehicle targeting consumer, advanced manufacturing, clean energy and new materials. Yu is the founder of Advantech and Redview, the release said. 

Earlier this year, Advantech led a $100 million Series B round of funding for Chinese biotech start-up Zai Lab.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Early-stage
• China
• USA
• TMT
• Northern Light Venture Capital
• New Horizon Capital
• Venture