Singapore’s PatSnap raises $300m Series E
Singapore and UK-based market intelligence and analytics provider PatSnap has raised a $300 million Series E round led by SoftBank Vision Fund II and Tencent Holdings.
Sequoia Capital China, CPE, Shunwei Capital, and Vertex Ventures also participated. It follows a $38 million Series D in 2018 led by Sequoia and Shunwei that also featured Singapore VC firm Qualgro.
PatSnap will use the new capital to develop technology and new products, build out its global sales presence, and expand its domain expertise in sectors where its technology is used by R&D and intellectual property (IP) teams.
The company’s core offerings are R&D and IP analysis platforms that use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as computer vision and natural language processing to provide market insights and support patent registration. PatSnap says its technology can help customers speed up the processing of unstructured data 12x, which can result in a 3x increase in successful product launches.
Clients include universities, research institutions, government agencies, and global brands such as Dyson, Spotify, and Dow Chemical. There are currently more than 10,000 customers globally, compared to around 8,000 at the time of the Series D. China and the US are its largest markets.
“We believe in a connected world and are impressed with PatSnap’s AI-centric platform that helps organizations and researchers to connect the dots,” Levin Yao, a managing partner at Tencent Investment, said in a statement.
“PatSnap is the clear leader in the connected innovation intelligence category. Its impressive portfolio of customer use cases reinforces its role in enabling companies to significantly improve their ability to identify business opportunities and threats across multiple domains and industries.”
Vision Fund II was announced in mid-2019 with $108 billion in initial commitments and remains open. SoftBank has struggled with several high-profile investments involving the first Vision Fund, a $100 billion vehicle launched in 2018.
Tencent Investment is a VC unit of Tencent Holdings set up in 2008. It launched a RMB10 billion ($1.5 billion) fund in 2011, anchored by a RMB5 billion commitment from its parent.
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