Aicadium, a technology company founded by Temasek Holdings, has acquired Singapore-based artificial intelligence software firm BasisAI, according to a joint statement by the two firms.
According to BasisAI’s filings with Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), its investor Sequoia India and three co-founders – Silvanus Lee, Linus Lee and Liu Feng-Yuan – sold their stakes to Arcadium Singapore Pte Ltd, an entity owned by Aicadium, in July this year.
The transactions made Aicadium the largest shareholder with a 72.88% stake in BasisAI. Dahlia Investments, another Temasek subsidiary, remained the only other shareholder with a 27.12% stake in the startup.
According to the announcement on Tuesday, BasisAI and Aicadium will expand their operations to serve a global enterprise customer base and be jointly known as Aicadium.
“The strengths that BasisAI brings to the Aicadium team include not only an extremely talented and experienced group of data scientists, software engineers, and business leaders but also an AI platform that was built from the ground up with these values in mind,“ said Michael Zeller, Head of AI Strategy & Solutions at Temasek.
Per the joint statement, Aicadium seeks to partner with Temasek portfolio companies and other enterprises to develop and scale end-to-end AI solutions to improve business outcomes. It has a team of data scientists, software engineers and AI business leaders in Singapore and San Diego, US.
Aicadium was launched in August 2021 and functions as Temasek’s new global centre of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
BasisAI was founded by Silvanus Lee, Linus Lee and Liu Feng-Yuan in 2018. Silvanus Lee and Linus Lee were former data science heads at Uber and Twitter APAC, respectively, while Liu was the former data science and AI director at GovTech Singapore.
In 2019, BasisAI raised a $6 million (S$8.2 million) seed round from Temasek and Sequoia India, making it one of the largest seed-stage rounds raised by a Singapore-based company at the time.
In 2020, the firm launched Bedrock, an end-to-end machine learning platform that enables organisations to deploy AI solutions rapidly. Its clients include DBS, UOB, OCBC, ComfortDelGro and Singapore Airlines.
The firm said that the newly merged entity will bring together their leading capabilities, including in the areas of deep AI/machine learning and product development.
“This acquisition allows us to accelerate our growth strategy, broaden our reach and expand our offering that is built on the strong foundation of a powerful AI platform and a combined team of talent. We are excited to be joining forces with Aicadium to augment our strength in building responsible AI systems,” said Liu Feng-Yuan, co-founder and chief executive officer of BasisAI.