China’s voice recognition champion iFlytek gets US$407 million funding boost from state investors
- Company to invest 2.05 billion yuan in its AI speech platform, with 1.18 billion yuan coming from proceeds of the private placement
iFlytek, China’s national champion in voice recognition, has raised 2.8 billion yuan (US$407 million) via a private placement that brought in money from a state-backed industry fund and several provincial government funds.
The Shenzhen-listed company will use the proceeds to bankroll research in open platforms for smart speech, so-called next generation cognitive technology, and service robots, it said in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday.
The placement has pulled in investors including Anhui Development Investment Company, Anhui Railway Development Fund, Anhui Smart Voice and Artificial Intelligence Venture Capital, as well as an investment fund for state-owned companies under government-controlled investment vehicle China Reform Holdings.
Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Hefei, the capital of the eastern Chinese province of Anhui, iFlytek has established itself as the country’s foremost developer of advanced speech recognition, speech evaluation and natural language processing technologies.
In 2017 the company was handpicked by the Chinese government to spearhead the country’s development in voice intelligence and take the lead in building an “open innovation platform”.