Google joins Series C round for Japan's Abeja
Google has participated in a Series C round for Japanese corporate analytics player Abeja, taking the company's cumulative funding to JPY6 billion ($53 million).
It extends a process started earlier this year by existing backers Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, Nvidia Corporation, and PNB-Inspire Ethical Fund, a vehicle set up by Japan’s Inspire Corp and Malaysia’s Permodalan Nasional that helps Japanese companies access Islamic markets.
Other Series C investors include Daikin Industries, Japan Post Capital, Musashi Seimitsu Industry, TBS Innovation Partners, Topcon Corporation, and SBI Investment, which is investing via its new JPY50 billion AI and blockchain fund.
Founded in 2012, Abeja offers retailers services to enhance customer analyses such as tools for measuring waiting times and recording the age and gender of store visitors. Its flagship product, Abeja Platform, has been used in about 150 companies.
Google will help the company build out capacity in artificial intelligence services across a number of areas, including retail and manufacturing. Abeja established a Singapore-based subsidiary last year and is expected to leverage much of the fresh capital for international expansion.
“Abeja has strong technical capabilities and ML [machine learning] expertise and is respected across the industry for its track record of collaboration and the effective deployment of its tech solutions,” Shinichi Abe, a managing director of Google Cloud Japan, said in a statement.
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