Taiwan AI player iKala gets $17m Series B

Taiwanese VC firms Hotung Investment and Pacific Venture Partners also participated. It brings total funds raised to date to $30.3 million, including a $10 million Series A in 2018 from Hotung, Pacific and Ace Capital.

IKala helps around 400 enterprise clients in 12 industries improve their AI competency in areas such as customer acquisition and data-driven marketing. Products include KOL Radar, an influencer database, and Shoplus, an AI-enabled social commerce support services dashboard. These tools were consolidated earlier this year in a new division called iKala Commerce.

Operations extend across Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan. The fresh capital will be used to reinforce the company’s current footprint, develop technology, and expand into Indonesia and Malaysia.

"Taiwan has an excellent reputation for having some of the best high-tech talents in both hardware and software around the region,” Lee-Feng Chien, an iKala's board member and formerly a managing director at Google Taiwan, said in a statement. “With Wistron as a strategic partner, iKala can become a major driving force for transforming Taiwan into an AI industry and talent hub in Asia.”

Wistron is investing via a wholly-owned subsidiary focused on digital technology development. The company, historically known for manufacturing computers and other electronics, is attempting to expand capacities in areas such as AI, the internet-of-things, robotics, artificial reality, and virtual reality. To this end, it launched a $20 million VC fund alongside Fenox Venture Capital in 2016.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Support services
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Taiwan (China)
• Hotung International
• Pacific Venture Partners
• artificial intelligence
• TMT