Morning Report: China based AISpeech raised a $75M Series D led by Oriza Holdings and China Minsheng Investment Group.
AISpeech, a Suzhou city-based artificial intelligence startup, just announced a $76 million Series D, boosting its total funding to over $121 million. The round was led by the Suzhou-based Oriza Holdings and China Minsheng Investment Group. Other participants include Foxconn Technology Group, MediaTek, and Shenzhen Venture Capital.
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The announcement came in a day after California-based voice interface startup Tact.ai raised $27 million from Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Comcast.
Founded in 2007 by two University of Cambridge graduates, AISpeech develops natural language interaction technologies like speech recognition, tone analysis, dialog management, speech synthesis, and natural language processing in both Chinese and English.
Currently, the company has partnered with some of the major car video recording, smartphone, and furniture manufacturers in China, such as Jado, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and Lenovo. Together it offers products such as an in-car operating system, intelligent robots, and smart home appliances.
As voice recognition gradually matures, companies like AISpeech are trying to turn these technologies into real-life applications that turn a profit. According to Chinese media site 36 Kr (link in Chinese), AISpeech is in direct competition with iFlytek, a public company, as well private counterparts Mobvoi Inc. and Unisound.
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