Chinese Internet giant Baidu Inc. has agreed to acquire KITT.AI, a Seattle-based natural language processing start-up founded by Chinese entrepreneurs Yao Xucheng and Chen Guoguo. The pair plan to jointly develop natural language understanding technology as part of Baidu's intense push into AI.
Xuebajun, an education mobile app allowing students to upload questions and get answers from both AI robots and online teachers, has signed a strategic partnership with Wuhan city-based education group Dangdai Education to seek opportunities in the artificial intelligence space.
Baidu Inc., China's leading search engine and a champion of artificial intelligence technology, has helped reunite one Chinese family by using its face recognition technology.
Robin Li, founder and chief executive officer of Baidu Inc., sent an internal letter to staff yesterday and stressed again the importance of Baidu's artificial intelligence strategy. He predicted that AI will be the center of the company's future. Below is a translation of the letter for your enjoyment: Dear Baidu students: Today is the May Fourth, Youth Day. I have one piece of bad news and one piece of good news to tell everyone. The bad news is that, according to the new standards set by the United Nations, the age of 15 to 24 belongs to the "youth" category, which means that most of our Baidu students are already aged beyond "youth" as our Baidu family's average age is 26. However, the good news is that, in accordance with this standard, 17-year-old Baidu, is just entering the season of youth, full of infinite vitality. In fact, I believe that youth should never be defined by age – "youth" is a spirit of determination, the mentality of not being satisfied with the status quo, also of those who dream of changing the world. At any time, as long as our hearts and our dream remain the same, our courage …
The year 2016 has been called the dawn of the artificial intelligence (AI) age. In China alone, there were 202 investment deals worth RMB6.8 billion (US$1 billion) in AI start-ups during the 12 months ending June 30, 2016.
China's Baidu Inc. has agreed to jointly develop new cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) solutions aimed at Chinese automakers with Harman International, Samsung's wholly-owned subsidiary focused on connected technologies for the automotive, consumer and enterprise markets.
China's Lenovo Group Ltd. plans to invest US$1.2 billion in the research and development of artificial intelligence, big data, and Internet of Things (IoT) technology in the next four years, said the company's chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing during a media interview.
Tencent YouTu Lab, a machine learning-focused artificial intelligence research lab under Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd., has set a record by achieving an 83.29% recognition rate in the MegaFace challenge, an internationally recognized test known for its high level of difficulty. This is the second time YouTu Lab has achieved a world record, following its recent record in the Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) face database challenge in March 2017. With data training based on two million Western faces and four million Asian faces, YouTu achieved an 83.29% recognition rate in a test to recognize a million faces in the MegaFace challenge. Notably, the YouTu algorithm demonstrated the scope of its applicability when it set new records in both LFW and MegaFace databases. In the massive facial recognition test, the recognition rate for an interference set of one million faces at scale has become the most effective tool when searching for missing persons and wanted fugitives. YouTu Lab's technology has helped nearly 10 families find their missing members within 24 hours of their disappearance in China's Fujian province since March 2017. The technology is also used across a wide range of applications, including Tencent's social networking site Qzone, …
Chinese search engine giant Baidu, Inc. has acquired xPerception, a U.S. technology company that provides visual perception software and hardware solutions for a range of applications, including robotics, virtual reality (VR), and devices for people who are visually impaired. The acquisition further strengthens the use of Baidu's visual perception technology in key projects like augmented reality (AR) and autonomous driving. It also accelerates the development of Baidu's artificial intelligence-based products. Financial terms were not disclosed. California-based xPerception is a technology start-up with world-class talent from both China and the United States. The co-founders of the company, Dr. Bao Yingze and Dr. Chen Mingyu, were early key engineers at AR start-up Magic Leap. The acquisition of xPerception is the latest in a recent series of notable investments aimed at strengthening Baidu's position as a global leader in AI. AI has permeated many of Baidu's products, and the company has been attracting leading AI talent through its research facilities in Silicon Valley, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Following the acquisition, the core xPerception team will join Baidu Research and continue developing xPerception's core technology, visual inertial simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Accurate and robust SLAM is one of the fundamental technologies in visual …
To say that Meng Xing, V.P. and entrepreneur-in-residence at Chinese venture firm Shunwei Capital, has been busy would be a gross understatement. Over the past ten years, the 31-year-old venture capitalist and entrepreneur has founded two artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups, selling one, an image recognition AI company, to Amazon and the other to a listed Chinese company. In between, he worked as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan Hong Kong and casino giant Caesars Entertainment, on top of getting an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.
Matrix Partners China has led a series A financing round in Shanghai-based credit assessment and online lending platform Alading Bank, according to a company announcement.
Andrew Ng (pictured), a vice president and chief scientist at Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc., is leaving the company to seek new challenges in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) beyond the technology world.
FineArt, an AI Go-playing program developed by the AI Lab of Chinese Internet giant Tencent, is proving to be a prodigy, winning an annual world-wide AI Go tournament only a year after its creation and highlighting China's rapid advance as it seeks to strengthen its AI capabilities.
The global talent war for top artificial intelligence (AI) talent just intensified, as Chinese ride share giant Didi Chuxing officially launched an AI lab in California to attract top engineering talents to advance transformation in the global transportation industry.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang mentioned artificial intelligence, the current buzz word in venture and tech circles, for the first time while making an annual speech on March 5 in Beijing, highlighting Beijing's focus on the next technology frontier and its determination to support the industry's future growth.
CloudMinds Inc., a Chinese start-up focused on the development of cloud-intelligence-based applications, and backed by SoftBank Group Corp., announced that it raised US$100 million in a series A funding round during a press conference held in Beijing yesterday. Founded in 2015 by Huang Xiaoqing, the former head of research at China Mobile, CloudMinds aims to build artificial intelligent "brains" on the cloud, instead of within humanoid robots. An average human brain weighs less than 1.5 kilograms, while the silicon alone needed for an artificial brain would weigh over one thousand tons, based on current computing capacity, the company claims. No identities of the investors were disclosed. The latest round follows the completion of US$31 million in angel and seed financing from SoftBank Group International, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., Walden International and Keytone Ventures in May 2016. During the same conference, CloudMinds launched a cloud intelligence ecosystem that combines the cloud, networks and terminals, as well as applications including a guide helmet designed to help the blind navigate streets. Outside of the guide helmet for the blind, CouldMinds is in the process of building a cloud central control system connecting actual humanoids with a central "nerve system" on the …
Baidu Ventures, Baidu Inc's US$200 million early-stage investment unit focused on artificial intelligence, has joined a US$27 million series B funding round in 8i, a New Zealand-based AI start-up, according to a company announcement
Microsoft Corporation has named Wang Yongdong (pictured), currently chief technology officer of Microsoft Asia-Pacific R&D Group, in the latest move of a series of senior management reshuffle among its Chinese executives.
Chinese tech companies are developing their own versions of AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google DeepMind that beat 9-dan professional Go player Lee Sedol last year. But these Chinese programs have a long way to go before reaching AlphaGo's perfect win record versus humans, Chinese state media reported.
China could become the most competitive country in the age of artificial intelligence, which gives the country an opportunity to lead the world economy in the future, according to Kai-fu Lee, founder of Sinovation Partners and former head of Google China.
Chinese search engine giant Baidu, Inc. has appointed Lu Qi, formerly global executive vice president at Microsoft, and noted expert in artificial intelligence, as its group president and chief operating officer, in charge of products, technology, sales, marketing and operations.
The closing months of 2016 have been kind to Qiming Venture Partners. The US$2.7 billion-under-management Chinese venture capital firm saw three of its portfolio companies list in public markets during the past month: in Shanghai, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
China Merchants China Direct Investments (CMCDI), a Hong Kong-listed investment entity managed by China Merchants Group and First Eastern Investment Group, has agreed to commit RMB90 million (US$13 million) to Anhui Iflytek Venture Capital LLP, a fund focused on investing in Internet and artificial intelligence applications in China.
A member of Temasek Holdings, WI Harper Group, FirstFloor Capital and Qualgro have invested US$19.5 million as part of a series B round in Taiwan-Headquartered Appier, a company that uses artificial intelligence to help businesses grow in a cross-screen era.
The era of mobile Internet is ending and future opportunities in technology exist in artificial intelligence, Robin Li, the CEO of Internet search leader Baidu Inc., said yesterday at the third World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province.
Ten Chinese angel and venture firms, including the Zhen Fund, Innovation Angel Funds and CAS Star, have jointly launched an accelerator focused on artificial intelligence and big data.
Chinese Internet search engine giant Baidu Inc. has decided to end a food-delivering drone project to focus on artificial intelligence, according to remarks made by a company executive in Beijing reported by Chinese media.