AInnovation has completed Series C financing to rank among the AI unicorns. This series of financing was led by CICC ALPHA, followed by Shanghai Guohe Capital, Riverhead Capital and other institutions, and the previous shareholder Huaxing Growth Capital continued to invest capital. China Renaissance and CICC acted as joint financial advisors for the series.
As an AI subsidiary of Sinovation Ventures, AInnovation is a new-generation AI unicorn company growing up amid the wave of AI industrialization. With the mission of "Creating AI-empowered business value", the company is committed to providing AI products and solutions for enterprises with advanced AI technology, and helping traditional industries to reduce costs and increase efficiency, enhance business value and realize intelligent transformation.
Driven by the dual-wheel drive model of "technology & products + industry scenarios", AInnovation employs computer vision and machine learning technologies to build ManuVision industrial vision platform, MatrixVision video intelligence platform, and Orion automation machine learning platform. Based on those, it provides customers in manufacturing, finance, retail, public services and other industries with AI products and industry solutions that can be quickly delivered and implemented. With the introduction of the new infrastructure policy, AInnovation has been deeply engaged in intelligent manufacturing, creating a business panorama of "industrial vision-industrial automation-industrial cloud platform" and penetrating vertical segments. It has gained recognition from many industry leading customers, such as CISDI Group, CISDI Group, CIMC, Zongshen Industrial Group, Baowu Group and Mars.
Hocking Xu, CEO of AInnovation
“AInnovation is committed to becoming a banner for AI commercialization. In the past two years since its founding, it has embraced a clear strategic path featuring empowerment, ejection, and integration to commercialize the technology in a fast manner. Currently, AInnovation has established a presence in many cities in China and built a group company operation mode. We are working to improve talent structure and capacity building in terms of technology, products, industrial application scenarios, delivery operation, and commercialization, seeking to provide integrated AI solutions with highly effective execution. Going forward, AInnovation will work to take deep roots in the industry and aim for all-win for itself, its customers, the industry, and investors in aspects from business empowerment to value co-creation. We welcome talented people in technology and commercialization to join us, to jointly fulfill the mission of the times of AI-enabled business value."
Liang Guozhong, Managing Director of CICC Partnership and Chairman of CICC ALPHA
“Traditional industries hold huge potential, which needs to be activated and catalyzed by emerging technologies such as AI. Then they can enter a new growth period and bring considerable wealth growth to the world economy. AInnovation is committed to promoting the intelligent transformation and upgrade of traditional industries, which will promise long-term value and is in line with national sci-tech innovation strategies and industrial evolution trends. We are very optimistic about the growth prospects of AInnovation."
Zhou Wei, Founding Team Member and Executive General Manager of CICC ALPHA
"From Series A to Series C, we have witnessed the growth of AInnovation all the way and continuously led the company's Series A, Series A+ and Series C, and made additional investments in Series B financing. AI empowering traditional industries is a test of the comprehensive strength of AI vendors. With a fast and resilient team, AInnovation is the fastest-growing, most commercially minded and innovative AI company we have seen in recent years. We hope that after AInnovation becomes a unicorn, it can continue to increase investment in technology innovation and empower traditional industries with innovative products and solutions.
Song Yi, a partner of Shanghai Guohe Capital
"Shanghai Guohe Capital focuses on industrial upgrading and technological innovation. Despite the epidemic, it has managed to maintain a steady investment pace, completing investments on more than a dozen high-quality projects during the year, such as AInnovation. The team values the business idea and technological innovation strength of AInnovation in applying AI empowerment to traditional industry upgrade and is particularly optimistic about the company's ability to solve industry pain points and form standardized products through in-depth exploration of the industry, which coincides with the investment strategy and value concept of Shanghai Guohe Capital. Guohe firmly believes that AInnovation will become an important force to help upgrade and transform China's traditional industries in the future and create value for the society in a sustainable way."
Li Zhenni, Head of Emerging Industry Investment, Riverhead Capital
"In making an investment, Riverhead Capital believes that resources should be channeled to the most valuable enterprises. Riverhead Capital has been seeking a breakthrough point to apply AI in traditional industries. However, we rarely see quality corporate targets that boast solid AI technology, understand the pain points of traditional industries, standardize the service, and are capable of expanding scale quickly at the same time. It is foreseeable that AInnovation will create great value to traditional industry upgrading and transformation and the social economy. It is exactly the investment model and the 'most valuable enterprise' in our eyes."
Du Yongbo, a Managing Partner of Huaxing Growth Capital
"AI has always been something we focus on. The in-depth application of AI in various industries, especially industrial and financial industries, is a direction we are optimistic about in the long run. Huaxing Growth Capital led the Series B financing of AInnovation last year. After completing the investment, we have seen many impressive achievements of the company in AI technology R&D, and the combination of AI technology and application scenarios. At the same time, we also recognize more the excellent team of AInnovation. We are very pleased to see the company grow into a unicorn in less than a year after our investment, and we are honored to continue to increase the company's Series C funding. We believe that AInnovation will bring us more surprises in the future."
Since its establishment in March 2018, AInnovation has completed angel, A/A+, B and C rounds of financing, with investors including Sinovation Ventures, CICC ALPHA, Huaxing Growth Capital, Chengwei Capital, Shanghai Guohe Capital, SAIF Partners, Riverhead Capital, CreditEase and many other well-known institutions. Going forward, AInnovation will enhance its leading role in AI empowerment in fields like manufacturing, finance, retail, public services, etc., and accelerate the commercial use of AI.