China digital enterprise services provider raises $50m

Bertelsmann Asia Investments (BAI), Three Gorges Capital, China Merchants Venture Capital, Morningside Venture Capital, IDG Capital, Chuxin Capital, and Lighthouse Capital also participated. Several of these investors contributed to Deepexi’s $35 million Series A round eight months ago, which was led by Hillhouse, Morningside, and IDG.

Founded in 2018, the company has developed a cloud-based internet framework that incorporates 5G, internet of things (IoT), big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing technologies. The goal is to provide a highly scalable platform that helps customers with digital business transformation across the retail, fast-moving consumer goods, beauty, automotive, industrials, real estate, and computing, communications and consumer electronics sectors.

Deepexi, which employs 600 people in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu, claims to work with more than 50 medium and large-size enterprises. These include online fruit retailer Pagoda, China Unicom, beauty products platform Afiona, carmaker Geely Auto, State Grid Corporation of China, mobile phone brands Appo and Vivo, and consumer electronics players Gree, and TCL.

The company has four service lines: the outsourcing of general technology ecosystems; new retail solutions, including digital marketing and customer data analysis; industrials applications such as smart manufacturing; and data center solutions. Its product offering is underpinned by 50 software copyrights and 10 core patents. Concurrent with the fundraising, Deepexi released the latest iteration of its product suite, which it claims offers full-scenario data intelligence capabilities.

“The completion of this round of financing is not only a short-term milestone at the resource level, but it also marks a development in the company’s product technology vision. Moving beyond the middle office and helping Chinese companies to digitalize at all stages will become Deepexi’s new mission,” Kai Liu, a managing director at Morningside, said in a statement.

Deepexi received RMB15 million ($2.1 million) in angel funding from IDG and Chuxin in 2018. This was followed by a RMB85 million pre-Series A round led by Hillhouse in March 2019.

The company is one of a growing number in China that integrate AI, big data processing and the provision of cloud-based IT services. Customers can leverage the machine-learning capabilities of third-party platforms to apply algorithms to different aspects of their business. It also encompasses a shift towards platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions, with software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers as the main actors.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Early-stage
• China
• Hillhouse Capital Management
• Morningside Technologies
• IDG capital
• TMT