Facial recognition provider SenseTime becomes the most funded AI startup

Chinese facial recognition provider SenseTime has become the world’s most funded AI startup following a $600 million funding round. The latest round of funding was led by Alibaba Group Holdings to extend SenseTime’s existing one billion dollar valuation. Other investors which took part in the series-C fundraising include Temasek Holdings and Suning.Com Co Ltd. While the company is yet to disclose its current valuation, Bloomberg reported it’s over $3 billion. Joe Tsai, Alibaba...

9 April 2018 | Funding

Microsoft co-founder Allen investing $125 million to ‘add common sense’ to AI

Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen has announced $125 million to support the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) in its research to add common sense to AI via Project Alexandria and fund existing projects. Project Alexandria will integrate knowledge developed in machine reading and reasoning (Project Aristo), natural language and understanding (Project Euclid), and computer vision (Project Plato) to create a fresh, unified and extensive knowledge source. Afterwards, this...

13 March 2018 | Funding

Budget: UK to boost ‘industries of the future’ funding – including AI, IoT, and driverless cars

The latest budget from the UK government increases financial support for the ‘industries of the future’ which includes AI, IoT, and driverless cars. As the UK prepares to depart the EU, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is boosting funding of industries where the UK is already emerging a leader to help solidify its position on the world stage. £75 million will be set aside for artificial intelligence to build on the existing success stories from the likes of Cambridge-based DeepMind...

20 November 2017 | Funding

UK AI chipmaker Graphcore raises millions from Silicon Valley investor

graphcore ai

Graphcore, an ambitious UK startup building dedicated AI chips, has raised millions in a new round of funding from one of Silicon Valley’s top investors. Sequoia Capital has previously invested in companies such as Apple, Google, and WhatsApp. The investor has now led a $50m (£38.2m) funding round in Graphcore — which has its headquarters in Bristol, UK. Dedicated AI chips are set to boom in the coming years with implementation in smartphones, connected vehicles, IoT devices, and...

13 November 2017 | Funding

CognitiveScale raises $50 million to bring in new advancements in its AI products

CognitiveScale has announced it has raised an additional $15 million in funding from Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Microsoft Ventures, The Westly Group and USAA, bringing the company's total to $50 million. CognitiveScale will be bringing in further advancements in the state of its two flagship products Engage and Amplify, which are built on its open and extensible Cortex OS. Engage aims to provide an exceptional customer experience, accessible through any digital touch point,...

15 June 2017 | Funding

CrowdFlower raises $20 million in venture funding citing ‘Cambrian’ AI explosion

San Francisco-based crowdsourcing firm CrowdFlower has raised $20 million in venture funding which will be used to extend its ‘human-in-the-loop’ AI platform functionality and develop integrations into other machine learning technologies. The funding will also enhance its operations team by hiring new data scientists, machine learning experts, engineers, customer success managers, and sales and marketing professionals. The investment round was led by Industry Ventures, with new...

14 June 2017 | Funding

People.ai grabs $7 million funding to launch world’s first AI-powered sales management platform

People.ai has received $7 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Its list of investors includes Y Combinator, Ron Conway's SV Angel, Index Ventures and Shasta Ventures. Nakul Mandan, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, will be a part of the People.ai board of directors. People.ai is an artificial intelligence (AI) powered sales management platform that helps sales managers make better and faster decisions by providing refreshing insights and utilising a data...

8 June 2017 | Big Data