ClearVue joins $74 million round for China's Aibee

Other investors include GSR Ventures, Hong Kong-based jewelry company Chow Tai Fook, and Sequoia Capital China.

Aibee has raised RMB1 billion ($170 million) since its inception. This includes a $60 million Series A last November led by Sequoia and Red Star Macalline, a Hong Kong-listed furniture mall operator.

Co-founded by Yuanqing Lin, formerly head of research at Baidu in 2017, Beijing-based Aibee helps corporate clients implement AI technologies such as computer vision, speech recognition, natural language understanding, big data analytics, and robotics. Recruits include Shenghuo Zhu, previously head of Alibaba Group's AI-backed Decision Intelligence Lab, who leads machine learning.

The most significant breakthrough in 2019, according to Lin, is the commercialization of AI in retail. Aibee claims to have partnered with 11 of the 30 largest commercial real estate brands in China and with more than 80 large shopping malls. It works with the likes of Chow Tai Fook, Red Star Macalline, Hong Kong's K11, and Wanda Group.

A competitor in the space will be China Everbright-backed Terminus. The relatively young company has already signed up T11, a Beijing-based supermarket operator specializing in fresh produce. It claims to capture offline data and provide the same analytics used by e-commerce players.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Early-stage
• China
• artificial intelligence
• ClearVue Partners
• GSR Ventures
• Sequoia Capital