China-based voice recognition technology provider AISpeech has received several hundreds of millions of yuan (RMB100m = $14.5m) in funding from investors including home appliance manufacturer Midea, 36Kr has reported.
Midea invested through a corporate venturing subsidiary and was joined in the round by Citic Securities, Zhuhai Dahengqin and Yuanhe Holdings.
AISpeech produces natural language processing technology that allows connected devices to process, understand and interact with speech.
Proceeds from the round, described by AISpeech as pre-IPO funding, will support research and development as it seeks to improve its conversational artificial intelligence technology and AI chips.
The company raised an eight-figure renminbi (RMB10m = $1.6m) amount from conglomerate Legend Holdings’ early-stage investment arm, Legend Star, and Tsinghua University’s TusPark Ventures fund in 2012, and added $15m in a DCM Ventures-backed series B round two years later.
Undisclosed investors provided $30m in series C funding in 2016 before AISpeech secured $75.7m in a mid-2018 round co-led by Oriza Holdings and China Minsheng that included fabless semiconductor provider MediaTek, contract manufacturer Foxconn and Shenzhen Venture Capital.
CTC Capital led the company’s last round, when it received $57.8m in series E funding from investors also including BAIC Capital, an investment vehicle for automotive manufacturer BAIC Group, and Citic Securities’ Goldstone Investment subsidiary, in April this year.
