
Chinese AI-driven search engine Tigerobo raises $33m
Tigerobo, an artificial intelligence-driven financial information search engine, has raised $33 million in Series A funding from PAC, CreditEase New Finance Industry Fund and existing investor Gaorong Capital.
Gaorong took part in the company’s angel round with Dianliang Shenghuo Asset Management and Tao Zhang, founder of online-to-offline services platform Dianping, now known as Meituan-Dianping. The VC firm also invested in Tigerobo's pre-series A round with NWS Holdings and Sun Hung Kai & Co, investment entities controlled by Hong Kong property developers New World Development and Sun Hung Kai, respectively.
Tigerobo was founded in 2017 by Ye Chen, formerly an executive at Meituan Dianping. The company’s main product is a financial information search engine capable of natural language processing, deep learning, and machine learning. It provides services including automatic translation and customized news feeds. Tigerobo claims the engine can also analyze media coverage on certain topics.
The company’s products entered the commercialization phase after the pre-series A round, said Chen. Revenue primarily comes from annual membership fees charged to corporate clients such as financial news groups, investment firms, educational institutions, and financial regulators. While it only has few individual clients, Tigerobo is exploring the possibility of providing more value-added services. It is also looking at extending coverage beyond finance.
There has been a surge in investment in Chinese AI companies, rising from $1.06 billion in 2017 to $4.8 billion in 2018, according to AVCJ Research. The country is home to SenseTime, which claims to be the world's most valuable AI start-up focused on computer vision and deep learning technologies. It raised $620 million at a valuation of $4.5 billion last year. Other recent activity in the space includes a RMB400 million ($58.9 million) round for AInnovation.
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