Voice interaction startup AISpeech has closed a pre-IPO round, bagging “several hundreds of millions of RMB” from investors including real estate developer Zhuhai Da Heng Qin, home appliance maker Midea’s venture capital unit, and Citic Securities, 36Kr reported on Thursday.
The new funds will be used on further developing its core conversational AI technologies, AI chipsets, and on increasing its capability to customize solutions for clients.
This round comes four months after the company, which counts Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), Foxconn (TAI: 2354), and MediaTek (TAI: 2454) among its investors, closed a RMB 410 million (USD 58 million) Series E round led by CTC Capital in April.
AISpeech features a human-machine interaction platform called the “dialogue user interface” (DUI) and the TH1520 chip it co-launched with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), the largest semiconductor foundry in China.
Its AI technologies are used by nearly 8,000 clients including smartphone maker Xiaomi, logistics company SF, and Alibaba.
This article is part of KrASIA’s “China Brief” section, where KrASIA’s reporters will provide quick daily updates about the tech ecosystem in China.