Mail.Ru Group, a Russia-based internet services provider listed in the UK, has made a $1.5m corporate venturing investment in Israel-based Cortica, which looks at images and videos through its Image2Text technology.
Mail.Ru’s investment is a part of the larger round of undisclosed size and the company’s other investors include Horizons Ventures, Li Ka Shing’s family office, and angel investor Ynon Kreiz, who serves as Cortica’s chairman.
Mor Yegerman, head of international mergers and acquisitions at Mail.Ru, said: ““Cortica’s breakthrough technology provides a degree of recognition and understanding accuracy that is comparable with that of the human brain.”
Igal Raichelgauz, co-founder and chief executive of Cortica, added: “Mail.Ru shares our vision for leveraging Image2Text technology for visual search and contextual advertising and taking users’ web surfing experience to a whole new level. Mail.Ru has the depth and breadth of market penetration to expose much larger audiences to Cortica’s technology”.
Mail.Ru Group’s websites reach approximately 86% of Russian-speaking internet users on a monthly basis, and was in turn backed by media groups Naspers and Tencent’s corporate venturing units ahead of its UK flotation in 2010.