The Series B fundraising is expected to give a push to the AI Chatbot platform concept that seeks to develop human-robot interaction.
The Shanghai-based 'Chatbot' provider Emotibot has completed a Series B+ funding round worth USD 45 million as the company pushes applied AI to the next level.
The fundraising round was led by strategy partners, private equity fund V. Fund Management (云晖资本), Beijing-based fin-tech focused Lingfeng Capital (领沨资本), equity investment firm Puhua Capital (普华资本) and Hong Kong employee-owned VC Keywise Capital (凯思博投资).
Founded in 2015 and led by founder and chief executive officer, Kenny Chien (简仁贤), Emotibot is an artificial intelligence company that uses next-generation AI to create 'emotions' that simulate social responses as well as deeper cognition and contextual understanding.
The Chatbot-provider is engaged in developing bots that can help people to have a better life and work environment and to solve business problems. It also provides a comprehensive financial intelligence solution with front-end integration to financial advisory and after-sales services.
This fundraising is part of the company's plan to keep developing NLP (Natural Language Processing) technology; this will underscore their claim to provide "emotional intelligence," and help to further develop and upgrade the bot factory, TM platform. The company believes that the future of human-robot interaction will depend on verbal conversation.
Emotibot claims to provide AI services to many clients in different industries, such as China Merchant Bank (招商银行), Ping An (平安), JCloud (京东云), Suning (苏宁), China Mobile (中移动) and Tencent (腾讯).
In 2018, the market size of artificial intelligence Chatbots for customer services in China was worth CNY 790 million. It is expected to reach CNY 1.67 billion by the end of this year, then increase to around CNY 2.67 billion by the end of 2020, according to Statista data analysis.
The rapid market growth of AI+ Chatbots is due to accelerating growth in investments in technology to develop innovative solutions. NLP technology is one of the areas that is receiving large investments to develop Chatbots.
As China invests heavily in the AI industry and looks forward to the deep development of the most sophisticated technology, new companies are rising in the market and enhancing the implementation of AI and machine learning algorithms, which will employ computational methods for learning, understanding and delivering human language content. The end result will be reliable, high-quality human-robot interaction and communication.
The near future may be predictable on occasion; however, the far future is less certain. The new technologies will, without a doubt, change human life and society. The combination of artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence is changing how humans interact with devices and robots. Nevertheless, the market is still in its early stages: thus, more investment is needed to push AI + Chatbot platforms to the next stage of development.