Unisound Secures $100M Series C Funding Led by CEC Health Fund, Prepares for Series C+ and IPO
VCBeat learned that on May 11, 2018, Unisound, a leading domestic IoT and AI service provider, announced the completion of its $100 million Series C financing round, setting a new record for the largest single funding round in the intelligent voice technology sector to date.
Unisound’s Series C financing round was led by the China Electronics Health Fund, with participation from 360, Qianhai Wutong M&A Fund, Hanfu Capital, and other investors. Meanwhile, the company’s new, larger Series C+ financing round is nearing completion.
Since its establishment in 2012, Unisound has been dedicated to AIoT artificial intelligence services. Possessing world-leading intelligent speech recognition and semantic understanding technologies with fully independent intellectual property rights, it is one of the few leading AI enterprises in China that boasts a full-stack technological chain encompassing algorithms, computing power, and chip capabilities.
On the 16th of this month, Unisound will officially launch the world’s first AI chip designed specifically for the Internet of Things (IoT), which has been independently developed over nearly three years. This is the industry’s first IoT AI chip featuring independent intellectual property rights and integrated voice solutions. Having already validated the viability of its products and user scenarios through offerings based on general-purpose chip solutions in markets such as smart homes, smart speakers, and children’s robots, Unisound will be able to rapidly penetrate the market upon mass production of its AI chip, meeting the demands of a wider variety of product types and forms in terms of cost, stability, and integration.
Dr. Huang Wei, CEO of Unisound, stated, “The recent China-U.S. trade war highlights the shortcomings in China’s core technologies, as we remain constrained by others at many critical technological junctures. In 2013, Unisound took the lead in the industry by establishing its ‘Cloud-Edge-Chip’ development strategy, and in 2015, it decided to invest in the research and development of its proprietary chips. Moving forward, Unisound will continue to dedicate itself to accumulating independent core technologies in the AIoT sector and promoting their practical industry applications. The proceeds from this financing round will be primarily allocated to R&D in artificial intelligence and chip technologies, enabling businesses to achieve innovation and transformation through cost-effective, one-stop solutions. Meanwhile, we will further accelerate our business expansion in the fields of smart living and smart services, and actively contribute to building a robust industrial chain ecosystem.”
CEC Health Fund, the lead investor in this round, stated: “As a platform company under China Electronics Corporation (CEC) that provides data integration, management, and application services for key national industries and departments, CEC Data designated healthcare big data as its core development focus from its inception, establishing itself as part of the ‘national team’ in healthcare big data. CEC Data has exerted efforts from multiple perspectives, including technology, platform construction, and industrial investment. As an important capital link in CEC Data’s ecosystem layout, CEC Health Fund focuses on investing in strongly related fields radiating from the healthcare data industry, such as Fintech, Biotech, artificial intelligence, and next-generation internet technologies. Unisound possesses industry-leading AI and chip technologies, along with high-quality product solutions validated by a large customer base. Furthermore, Unisound’s smart healthcare solutions align closely with CEC Data’s own healthcare ecosystem strategy. The two parties will jointly explore the market for natural speech recognition technologies in the healthcare sector, co-develop new products with shared intellectual property rights, and collaborate in the future on the R&D of AI chips tailored for the healthcare field, thereby jointly building an industrial cluster ecosystem for healthcare.”
Over the past year, Unisound’s various business lines have continued to experience rapid growth:
As the only chip supplier with actual shipments in the white goods sector, Unisound has accumulated a portfolio of high-quality leading clients, including Gree, Midea, and Changhong. In March 2018, it jointly launched the R1 smart speaker with Phicomm, positioning it as an AI central control hub.
In the automotive sector, Unisound holds over 70% market share in the aftermarket and is about to establish a joint venture with a well-known automaker to develop front-installed, automotive-grade AI chips;
In the healthcare sector, Unisound, as the leading provider of smart healthcare voice interaction solutions, has launched its pioneering professional medical voice interaction solution in over 60 representative benchmark Grade-A tertiary hospitals across China. The company has been recognized as an outstanding partner of Peking Union Medical College Hospital for two consecutive years. In December 2017, Unisound jointly established Haoyi Intelligence with Ping An Good Doctor to comprehensively deploy AI-driven healthcare services for mobile and home-based terminals.；
In the realm of innovative business initiatives, Unisound’s supercomputing platform has established a benchmark in AI supercomputing with a floating-point performance capacity of 10 quintillion operations per second. The company is also building and operating top-tier artificial intelligence supercomputing centers in China for the Xiamen Municipal People’s Government and Ping An Technology, a subsidiary of Ping An Group.
Moving forward, with the mass production and deployment of its proprietary AI chips, Unisound will leverage a more comprehensive, multi-dimensional one-stop solution. In collaboration with numerous strategic shareholders and partners, it will deeply cultivate multimodal AI services in the realms of smart living and smart services, thereby contributing further to the acceleration of domestic substitution initiatives and the breakthrough of China’s independent core technologies.