Chinese AI player Yitu raises $200m
Yitu Technology, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up that is developing solutions for machine vision, listening and understanding, has raised $200 million in Series C-plus funding.
The investors are Gaocheng Capital, a growth investment fund affiliated to Hillhouse Capital, and the international arms of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB). Hillhouse led Yitu’s initial Series C round of RMB380 million ($55 million) in May 2017.
The company was founded in 2012 by Long Zhu, a computer vision and AI specialist from the University of California, and Chenxi Lin, formerly an engineer at Alibaba Group’s Aliyun computing unit. It focuses on computer vision, natural language understanding, knowledge reasoning, intelligent hardware, and robotics, primarily for application in the security, financial, transportation, and healthcare sectors.
Yitu currently has four core product areas: facial recognition-based intelligent security systems; traffic management platforms; human-computer interfaces that use vision and speech; and smart imaging platforms that assist doctors in their diagnoses by screening medical images and cross-referencing the findings with patients’ medical records.
Both ICBC and SPDB are existing customers of Yitu, using the company’s visual recognition technology for client authentication. China Merchants Bank is another partner. Yitu has also worked with Aliyun on a traffic monitoring platform for police in Guiyang province and supplied technology solutions to China Customs and China Immigration Inspection.
The company raised an angel round from ZhenFund in 2013, and a Series A round from Sequoia Capital China and Gaorong Capital in 2014. This was followed by a Series B in 2016 led by Yunfeng Capital. All four investors re-upped in the Series C round.
Various Chinese AI developers have received PE and VC funding. The most prominent is SenseTime, which closed its Series C-plus round at $620 million last month, achieving a valuation of more than $4.5 billion. Megvii Technology, best known for its Face++ facial recognition technology, has also received substantial backing, raising $460 million in Series C funding last November.
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