Deal focus: VCs back steppingstones to immortality

When esteemed brain scientist Kenichiro Mogi faced his digital clone in January, he described it as himself in a dream. The on-screen double – created by training artificial intelligence (AI) with Mogi’s written works and social media texts – matched his voice and expressions as well as aspects of his intellect but took the conversation into some unexpected turns.

“It gives us a feeling as if there is life there,” Mogi said after the experiment. “When we hear the word digital clone, we tend to think of the metaphor as if it were a copy of ourselves, but what is actually happening is much more complex and richer.”

This is the core technology of Japan’s Alt, which describes its cloning process as the digitalisation of a person’s expertise and values. The start-up raised JPY 3.5b (USD 26m) last week from a group featuring Vertex Ventures, SBI Group, SMBC Venture Capital, and Spiral Capital.

The plan is to launch various B2B products that continuously refine their performance by distinguishing between individual users and tracking their behaviour – an approach Alt calls “personalised AI.” Data will be collected from these products and eventually synthesised into digital clones of the users.

“I sympathise with the digital clone concept, but I think it would be difficult to realise within a 10-year fund life. Within 20-30 years, it is a possibility,” said Shuzo Ueki, who led the investment for Spiral.

“When I saw the clone of Mogi, there were aspects of the real Mogi in the way it talked, the word choices. I felt the possibility. Currently, it takes 2-3 seconds for it to answer each question, so you can easily identify the clone from the real person. If we can shorten that time, maybe it will be more difficult to tell which one is real.”

Ueki, like most of Alt’s investors, committed on the strength of the first B2B product, AI Gijiroku, an instant voice-to-text tool that works over videoconferencing calls and is said to be almost 100% accurate. Since its launch in early 2021, it has attracted more than 4,000 corporate clients and generated annual recurring revenue of USD 20m.

“It was the fastest growth that I have ever seen. That was the biggest reason for investing,” Ueki said, adding that this was achieved with a compact sales team of about five people.

The fresh capital will be applied to growing an almost exclusively Japanese client base, especially in Southeast Asia. Customising the product for different languages is considered a relatively straightforward process. The technical terminology of the various industries being served is more problematic; Alt has launched several versions covering fields such as pharmaceuticals and finance.

Upside is implied by one of AI Gijiroku’s closest counterparts, US-based Verbit, which has achieved annual revenue of USD 100m within five years of launch. Verbit raised a USD 250m Series E round last year at a valuation of USD 2b with support from Vertex. Both Verbit and Alt are considering IPOs in the near term.

In the meantime, Alt will continue to roll out B2B products with a view to improving its investment profile and collecting data for its long-term cloning plans. The next priority will be AI Call Center, a natural dialogue system that automates responses and analyses calls to mimic – and eventually exceed – the knowledge of live operators.

“Alt was developing their AI for 6-7 years with almost no sales, so when they finally launched AI Gijiroku last year, their algorithms where quite strong,” Ueki. “That’s why they have higher accuracy in voice recognition than their competitors. They are cutting-edge AI.”

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