Sailing, GF lead $77m round for Chinese cognitive AI specialist

Other investors include Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group, Jiangmen Ventures, Sfund, and Flower City Ventures. Both Sfund and Flower City are ultimately controlled by the Guangzhou government.

Dmai raised tens of millions of dollars for its Pre-Series A round in March 2019, according to AVCJ Research's records. This was led by Sailing, with participation from IDG Capital, CDH Investments, ECC Capital, and Jiangmen.

The company was founded in 2017 by AI specialist Songchun Zhu. His goal was to advance AI machine capabilities from "hear, speak and perceive" to "understand and think," said Jianjian Li, head of technology, media and telecom investment at GF, in a statement.

Dmai's cognitive solutions focus on education and new retail. It claims to supply more than 60 corporate customers - and through them reach millions of end-users - with smart education software and hardware products as well as entertainment platforms.

"Industries such as education demand deep human-computer interaction and personalized services backed by strong cognitive AI. It is a track with a broad market and in-depth technology. The empowerment of strong cognitive AI will produce great social value," said Zhu.

Yuan Fan, a partner at Sailing, added that Dmai is a global leader in general-purpose AI technology. This particular technology can realize more complex and efficient human-computer interaction based on a smaller amount of data analysis and accumulation, effectively making AI more "smart."

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

• Topics
• Early-stage
• Technology
• Greater China
• China
• artificial intelligence
• sailing capital