A new Beijing based artificial intelligence (AI) startup is on the horizon which is dubbed (by the company’s founder) to become “the Intel of the AI age.” It may be just a startup currently, but having just about closed a deal of $100m in funding led by Intel Capital, Horizon Robotics is set to do well. Others choosing to invest in the company include China-based Harvest Instruments and Morningside Venture Capital.
In a recent webcast run by Intel, Horizon confirmed it’ll be using the funds to speed up its research and development of AI based products and technologies. Founded back in 2015 by Yu Kai, the company currently builds chips that power AI in smart cameras and autonomous, self-driving vehicles. There are currently more than 1,000 different categories of AI-driven devices across the world, all of which will be equipped with brains in the future to make them safer, more convenient, and more fun, claims the company.
Intel Capital is the chip giant’s venture capital branch that plans to invest much more in Chinese technology firms in the future. “China has been and will continue being an important market for Intel Capital,” said the company. “We are very much focusing on looking for and investing in technologies that help China build and develop its data economy, including cloud, big data, data analytics, AI, autonomous driving and so on.”
As well as investing in Horizon Robotics, Intel Capital also announced that the company had made new investments in 15 different global tech firms, with an accumulative investment of $566m this year alone. Out of those 15, ten are located within the US (eight in California, one in New York, one in Oregon); two in Tel-Aviv; one in Canada; and one in Japan.
“The world is undergoing a data explosion,” said Intel’s senior vice-president and president of Intel Capital, Wendell Brooks. He predicts that by 2020, every autonomous vehicle that’s on the road will be producing around 4 terabytes of data per day. He also says that as Intel transitions into a data company, Intel Capital can carry on investing in tech start-ups to push forward the expanding data ecosystem and help new technologies emerge. Brooks also confirmed that either women or “under-represented minorities” (African Americans, American Indians, or Latinos) are in charge more than 10 percent of Intel Capital’s portfolio companies across the world demonstrating the diverseness of the company.
Original source SCMP
