Artificial intelligence is the intelligence demonstrated by machines as opposed to humans and animals. The exponential rate of technological growth has changed the world and artificial intelligence has taken centre stage in what the future holds. It is already impacting many fields of endeavour such as advertising, medicine and finance. Although it is a very powerful technology and has its fair share of negative consequences, the massive advantages to be gained can be fully utilised if proper human judgement and integrity is exercised. In this issue, Top 10 of Asia takes a brief look at its list of Asia’s top artificial intelligence startups (presented in random order) that are more than ready to radically alter the way people live, work and entertain themselves.
Cortica’s autonomous AI is based on proprietary brain research and utilizes unsupervised-learning technology backed by more than 200 patents. The three researchers that would become Cortica’s founders combined their expertise to hack into live rat brain tissue and “encode” digital images. This technology is the basis for providing the intelligence that enables autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and more.
AdMov is a Smart Programmatic Advertising and Intelligence Platform helping businesses delivering personalized ads to the right people at the right place, context and time. It is an in-vehicle advertising platform. Using the camera of its tablet, it is able to determine the age and gender of the passenger. With the use of artificial intelligence and face recognition, it is able to provide the riders with relevant content and ads.
Logz.io developed the only open source-based solution for monitoring, troubleshooting, and security based on ELK and Grafana. In addition to the product’s open source core, Logz.io has built an array of enterprise-grade features such as its machine learning Cognitive and Application Insights, Alerts, Live Tail, and more along with security and regulatory compliance. Notable customers include Capital One, Accenture, CNN, British Airways and more. It has also received a host of prestigious awards.
SigTuple builds intelligent screening solutions to aid diagnosis through AI-powered analysis of visual medical data though its AI platform, Manthana. It combines AI and medical data to form smart screening solutions and aid in medical diagnosis. Manthana makes it possible for work to be carried out on five major high-volume, screening processes of the healthcare industry – analysis of peripheral blood smears, urine microscopy, semen, fundus and OCT scans and chest x-rays.
Mobvoi is an innovative AI tech company with in-house core technologies in the areas including speech recognition, natural language understanding, and vertical search, among others. Its products include Mobvoi’s Virtual Personal Assistant (Mandarin voice assistant), the TicWatch line of smartwatches, the TicHome Mini smart speaker and TicPods Free true wireless earbuds. Mobvoi formed strategic partnerships with Wear OS by Google in 2015 (formerly Android Wear) and with automobile giant, Volkswagen, in 2017.
ViSenze provides artificial intelligence (AI) solutions aimed at giving great online shopping experiences to the consumer. It powers visual commerce at scale for retailers and publishers, delivering time-saving intelligent image recognition solutions for consumer search, discovery and action on the visual web. It is built by web specialists and computer scientists with deep machine learning and computer vision experience and is venture-backed by Rakuten and WI Harper. It has offices in US, UK, India, China and Singapore with the company having first started as a part of NExT, a leading research centre jointly established between National University of Singapore and Tsinghua University of China.
Appier is a technology company which provides artificial intelligence platforms to help enterprises solve their most challenging business problems. With Appier, marketers can unify all their customer data from multiple sources and obtain a holistic view of their target audiences. With more than 300 employees, Appier serves more than 1,000 global clients including Ford, P&G, Estee Lauder, HSBC, Visa, Disney, Microsoft, Starbucks, Tiffany&Co.
Supahands was founded in 2014 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It works with some of the most innovative artificial intelligence (AI) companies by optimizing its workflows through integrating in-house technology with its 3,000 strong team of remote taskers. With its hybrid human intelligence-machine system, Supahands specialises in preparing clean and accurate datasets to train AI and machine learning. To date, Supahands has helped companies such as Axiata, Media Prima, Rakuten Viki & iBotta.
SenseTime is an artificial intelligence (AI) unicorn focused on computer vision and deep learning. It has independently developed a deep learning platform, supercomputing centres and a range of AI technologies. In doing so, SenseTime has become China’s largest AI algorithm provider. It has more than 700 customers and partners in China and overseas, including world-renowned institutions and companies such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Honda, Alibaba, Suning, China Mobile, UnionPay, Wanda, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo and Weibo.
UBTECH Robotics was founded in 2012 and a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and humanoid robotics. In 2018, UBTECH achieved a valuation of USD$5 billion following the single largest funding round ever for an artificial intelligence company, underscoring the company’s technological leadership. Its mission is to bring a robot into every home, and truly integrate intelligent robots into the daily lives of everyone creating a more intelligent way of life.
LeapMind develops hardware architecture and a platform that enables users to use deep learning with its algorithms. The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. LeapMind is advancing an embedded deep learning solution, called JUIZ, to make deep learning accessible for broader applications. Its clients include Intel Corporation, Fujitsu Ltd, NTT Data Corporation, Koito Manufacturing Co Ltd and Sumitomo Mitsui Construction Co Ltd among others.