China AI chatbot developer raises $45m
Emotibot, a Chinese provider of computer vision and emotional recognition solutions to e-commerce platforms, financial institutions, and call center operators, has raised $45 million in an extended Series B round of funding.
The round was co-led by V Fund and Lingfeng Capital – both technology-focused private equity firms established by former Goldman Sachs executives – and an unnamed strategic investor. Keywise Capital, Zhongan Capital, Trend Capital, and Puhua Capital also contributed capital. The initial tranche of the Series B, worth $30 million, closed last December. It was led by China Development Financial, with participation from Cathay Financial, Ecovacs Robotics, and Advantech Capital.
Emotibot was established in 2015 by Renxian Jian, previously dean of Microsoft’s Asian internet engineering institute. The company claims to apply artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver a better understanding of human emotions. Its work on natural language processing led to the creation of what is said to be China’s first AI dialogue platform with universal semantic reasoning.
Emotibot now claims to be the only AI company in the country offering solutions with triple human-computer interaction. The plan is to build AI companions that can read, see, listen, remember, self-learn, and understand user emotions. Its bots can already fulfill more than 30 functions, including travel planning and hotel reservations as well as streamlined access to mobile phones and other smart devices.
Huawei Technologies is among the company’s clients, using Emotibot’s bots to support staff running its IT helpdesk and in its smart speaker product line. Other customers include mobile phone brand Oppo, China Construction Bank, China Ping An Insurance, Huatai Securities, China Mobile, Sanofi, Evergrande Real Estate, Foxconn Techology, Ford Motor, Tongcheng-eLong and Vipshop.
The new funding will go towards AI technology development and upgrading the existing bot platforms. Yanpin Xiong, a co-founder of V Fund, said that Emotibot is already the most advanced technology company in this field. “Semantic recognition is the most promising segment of the AI field, with a high technical threshold,” she said. “Emotibot can build dialogues and realize AI empowerment across different domains and scenarios.”
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