Singapore’s EDBI in $33m round for Taiwan AI player

SoftBank, Naver, Line and Hong Kong-based AMTD Group also participated. Previous investors include Sequoia Capital, UOB Ventures, Mediatek Ventures, Firstfloor Capital, WI Harper Group, Qualgro, Jafco, Translink Capital and Temasek Holdings-owned Pavilion Capital.

The capital will support marketing activities as well an expansion of the company's AI services portfolio. It will also be used to hire new international staff as part of an attempt to extend AI and engineering research capabilities beyond Taiwan into markets including Singapore.

“AI, combined with big data, IoT [internet-of-things] and other disruptive technologies, is going to create an impact on the world that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution,” Ren Tanaka, corporate officer and deputy head of the business unit at SoftBank, said in a statement. “We are already starting to see AI generate benefits in many parts of our lives and believe it also has a great role to play within the enterprise. Appier’s approach to AI for the enterprise is unique.”

Founded in 2012, Appier offers predictive analytics for real-time business decision-making to around 1,000 global brands across 14 Asian cities. The company claims to have doubled its revenues since its late last year when it attracted a $19.5 million Series B round led by Pavilion. 

EDBI is privately owned by Singapore’s Economic Development Board and typically targets companies in financial technology, data analytics, information security and software infrastructure sectors.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Taiwan (China)
• EDBI
• Softbank