Google Inc is making its first direct investment in a Chinese firm, an artificial-intelligence start-up, since mostly quitting the country in 2010 over censorship concerns.
Google is leading a round of funding for Mobvoi Inc (羽扇智信息科技), a company operating a Chinese-language voice-activated search engine. Google used the search engine instead of its own blocked service in the Moto 360 smartwatch released in China in June.
The deal underscores how Google might be edging back into the world’s largest mobile market with its first strategic investment in years. Last year, a growth equity arm of the corporation called Google Capital invested in InnoLight Technology Corp (旭創科技), a Suzhou-based company that makes high-speed data transmission hardware.
“Mobvoi is very excited to welcome Google as an investor as both companies share a long-term view on technologies,” said Mobvoi Inc founder Li Zhifei (李志飛), who is a former Google employee, without specifying the amount that Google is investing.
Mobvoi has raised US$75 million from backers including Sequoia Capital (紅杉資本) and ZhenFund (真格基金), the company said yesterday.
Mobvoi is to use the money to strengthen its artificial intelligence development, explore smartcar technologies and hire more people, the firm said.
“Mobvoi has developed some very unique speech and natural language processing technologies,” Google corporate development vice president Don Harrison said. “We were impressed by their innovative approach and the early traction that they’ve seen.”
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
RSS