Liulishuo, the China-based developer of an artificially intelligent English teaching platform, completed a $100m series C round on Wednesday featuring Hearst Ventures, the corporate venturing subsidiary of media group Hearst.
Growth equity firm China Media Capital and family office Wu Capital co-led the round, which included venture capital and private equity firm Trustbridge Partners, VC group IDG Capital and VC firms GGV Capital and Cherubic Ventures.
Founded in 2012, Liulishuo has created an interactive language learning course that uses an AI-infused engine that can automatically assess spoken and written English. The company’s app has accumulated more than 45 million registered users in China.
Yi Wang, Liulishuo’s founder and CEO, said: “Making learning efficient and personalised is our goal since the day Liulishuo was founded. The launching of the world’s first AI English teacher a year ago was an important step towards achieving the goal.
“The data and user cases we have collected in the past year have given us confidence that the deficiencies of traditional education, such as low efficiency, high costs and access inequality, can be greatly improved by artificial intelligence technologies.”
Liulishuo has not disclosed details of earlier funding, but a Bloomberg article in September 2016 said it had so far secured $42m from investors including IDG Capital, GGV and Trustbridge, and was valued at $200m.
Hearst Ventures and Cherubic Ventures were also identified by Liulishuo as existing investors for the latest round.