China’s AI chatbot developer Xiaoice has raised 1 billion yuan ($138.4 million) to speed up the development of its ‘AI Being’ technology in a bid to bring its ‘digital employees’ to the mainstream, the company said.
Neither the details of the investors nor the funding stage was divulged in the announcement.
AI Being, a term coined by Xiaoice’s team in 2019 refers to digital employees that are designed by AI technology to understand, interpret, and perform human communications and related tasks.
Xiaoice, which was spun off from Microsoft in July 2020 into a standalone Chinese firm, provides human-like speech services or chatbots for enterprises.
Some of the notable influencers created by Xiaoice include Hóng, a virtual employee of Sequoia China, as well as Xia Yubing, an AI bot created under the firm’s Avatar Framework that enables the bots to sing songs and draw pictures.
Currently, there are over 300,000 virtual employees operated by Xiaoice. They are set for a tech upgrade in the next quarter, according to the company.
The Beijing-based firm is currently headed by CEO Li Di, who previously served as general manager for Xiaoice in Microsoft’s Software and Technology Center of Asia; while Harry Shum, who formerly worked as executive vice president of Artificial Intelligence and Research at Microsoft, is serving as Xiaoice’s chairman. Xiaoice also operates in Japan besides China.
Previously, the firm snapped an undisclosed sum in a Series A round in July 2021 led by private equity firm Hillhouse Capital with participation from a slew of investors namely 5Y Capital, Neumann, IDG Capital, and GGV Capital.