Telecommunications group SoftBank’s Chinese investment unit, SBCVC, has led a RMB220m ($33.2m) series B round for China-based machine vision technology developer Malong Technologies, China Money Network has reported.
Founded in 2014, Malong has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) machine vision platform that provides product and image recognition as well as image content searching services for businesses in sectors such as textiles, furniture, retail, food and wine.
The company has raised a total of $44m in financing, according to a statement seen by China Money Network. The series B funding will be used for product development and to expand into overseas markets.
Malong is a graduate of software provider Microsoft’s Chinese accelerator, winning first place at its 2015 demo day. It secured $1.8m in pre-series A funding from Fortune Capital and Telescope Investment the same year.
Fortune and Telescope also contributed to a $9.3m series A round in 2016 alongside investment bank CSC Financial, Greenwoods Investment, Hongchou Investment and Coco Capital.
Song Anlan, managing partner at SBCVC, told China Daily: “As a leading promoter of AI technology commercialisation, Malong has great development potential. We are happy to invest in the company and expect to see it march into international markets and serve global customers.”