Government funds support China's Dark Matter AI
Dmai, a Chinese cognitive artificial intelligence (AI) platform also known as Dark Matter AI, has raised RMB 500m (USD 75m) in the first tranche of a Series B round from five state-backed investors.
Participants include Guangzhou Industrial Investment & Capital Operation Holding Group, Guangzhou City Construction Investment Group, Guangzhou Industry Control Group, Guangzhou Finance Holding Group, and Nansha Technology Financial Holdings.
Last year, the company raised a CNY 500m (USD 77m) Series A led by Sailing Capital and GF Venture Capital. Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group, Jiangmen Ventures, Sfund, and Flower City Ventures also contributed capital. Sfund and Flower City are both ultimately controlled by the Guangzhou government.
According to AVCJ Research, Dmai closed a pre-Series A amounting to tens of millions of dollars in 2019. This was led by Sailing, with support from IDG Capital, CDH Investments, ECC Capital, and Jiangmen.
The shift in the investor base from independent to government funds is reflective of a broader trend in China. It is a consequence of a more challenging investment environment and - according to some industry participants - a willingness on the part of certain renminbi-denominated players to be more aggressive on valuation.
At the same time, government-backed investors have demonstrated an appetite for high technology threshold companies, which are regarded as safer bets in terms of business landing.
Dmai was founded in 2017 by Songchun Zhu, a professor at UCLA with a global reputation for his research in general-purpose AI technology. His goal was to advance AI machine capabilities from "hear, speak and perceive" to "understand and think."
General-purpose AI can realize more complex and efficient human-computer interaction based on a small amount of data, which is often unstructured and unlabelled. As such, it is often described as more "smart."
Dmai's cognitive solutions focus on education, healthcare, and new retail. It claims in 2021 to work with more than 60 corporate customers - and through them reach millions of end-users - supplying smart education software and hardware products as well as entertainment platforms.
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