Japan personal 'clone' AI start-up gets $26m

Alt says it is on a mission to create an “autonomous society,” where “our daily lives themselves become assets.” The idea is to apply AI at the level of the individual, digitising a person’s intellect and placing it on a cloud to perform digital tasks.

Earlier this year, Alt claimed to create a digital clone of eminent brain scientist Kenichiro Mogi. The company said it was able to obtain the expertise of Mogi digitally and use it to answer questions about digital cloning based on his values.

“Although the digital clone's statements are not necessarily the same as your own, it is quite possible that you might think that way under certain circumstances,” Mogi said at the time.

“Perhaps it is the digital clone that shows us another line of ourselves that may have existed. The experience of interacting with a digital clone of myself led me to think a lot about what it means to be human and what it means to be unique.”

Mogi added that the clone could think in real-time. Its way of thinking, facial expressions, and voices made him question his identity. It was familiar to him as himself yet communicated in unexpected ways.

Temasek Holdings-owned Vertex invested via its second growth fund, emphasising that its commitment was based on the potential of Alt’s intermediary attempts to commercialise the technology with a voice-to-text tool called AI Gijiroku.

AI Gijiroku is said to be 100% accurate and able to cut labour related to notetaking and transcriptions in half. The proceeds from the investment will be applied primarily to its continued rollout. Recent work this front includes improved speech recognition for technical terms related to information security.

Vertex has strong conviction in the AI transcription category, having previously invested in US-based unicorn Verbit. In the near term, it expects Alt to parlay its brand of personalised AI into various business models including an AI call centre and a survey prediction service for research and polling.

SBI Group, SMBC Venture Capital, Akatsuki Ventures, Spiral Capital, Yitu Capital, Dimension, Industrial Technology Investment Corporation, and the VC arm of real estate company Tokyu Fudosan Holdings also participated in the latest round. They were joined by SMBC Nikko Securities, Mizuho Leasing, and medical technology company M3.

SBI also contributed to a JPY 1.3bn round last year with support from TNP Partners and several corporations. Earlier investors include Jafco, Senshu Ikeda Capital, OKB Capital, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. East Ventures backed the company as early as May 2015, making it the first institutional investor, according to AVCJ Research.

“We invested … in the hope that the digital clone and PAI [personal AI] developed by Alt will solve a fundamental need common to the world: freedom from unproductive labour,” Shuzo Ueki, a senior associate at Spiral said in a statement.

“The first product, AI Gijiroku, which is a cut-out of the elemental technology of PAI, has been adopted by companies of all types and sizes, and has achieved unprecedented explosive growth. We are confident that it will prove its value not only in Japan but also overseas, especially in the Asian region.”

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• Topics
• North Asia
• Technology
• Expansion
• Japan
• Vertex Growth
• SBI Holdings
• SMBC Venture Capital
• Spiral Ventures Japan
• artificial intelligence