Although the number of venture capital firms investing in private artificial intelligence companies fell by 10% in the second quarter of this year (excluding the startup incubator/acceleration round), the scale of investment in the artificial intelligence field still reached a record high in the quarter.
In short, although the amount of investment has fallen, the quality of investment has been constantly improving. In the second quarter of this year, a total of three artificial intelligence companies received a huge investment of more than US$100 million, including: China Health Healthcare Startups Carbon Cloud Intelligence obtained a round of financing of US$154 million, with participating investors including Tencent and Zhongyuan Xiehe Group; Fractal Analytics, a start-up company for artificial intelligence data analysis in the U.S., New Jersey, received a US$100 million growth equity investment led by Khazanah Nasional Berhad; and California’s Smart Cyber ​​Security “Unicorn†Cylance received a US$100 million D round of financing. Blackstone Group, Insight Ventures, and Cosla Ventures.
The vertical range of application of artificial intelligence technology is very extensive, including health care, network security, advertising marketing, financial management, and so on.
Nearly 70% of the investment has flowed into American artificial intelligence startups, and most startups that raise funds are also in the early stages: Nearly 60% of artificial intelligence investment deals are seed rounds/angel rounds or A rounds, and 12 others. % of the investment is B-round or C-round investment in the medium-term stage.
Second Quarter AI Investment Outside the U.S.
In addition to the United States, artificial intelligence startups in more than 15 countries received venture capital, and Canada and the United Kingdom each received 5% of the investment, followed by Israel and Germany. Other countries that have invested in artificial intelligence include China, India, Sweden, Ukraine, France, Hong Kong, and so on.
In the non-US market, there are several interesting AI investment deals, which are as follows:
Universal Venture Capital participated in two rounds of C-Financing. The startup company that acquired the investment was Bit Stew Systems, which provides data analysis platform services for the industrial IoT industry.
Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, and Salesforce Ventures three venture capital companies participated in the seed round financing of the London startup DigitalGenius, which provides artificial intelligence solutions for the customer service industry.
Alibaba participated in Round A financing of Israel’s e-commerce search and mining service provider Twiggle; medical health startup Zebra Medical Vision received round B funding from Khosla Ventures and Marc Benioff.
Konux, a provider of industrial sensor solutions for artificial intelligence in Germany, was awarded A round of financing by New Enterprise Associates.
The following figure shows the distribution of investment in the artificial intelligence field outside the United States in the second quarter of this year
The most active venture capital company in the field of artificial intelligence
Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Bain Capital Ventures were the three most active venture capital firms in the artificial intelligence field in the second quarter of 2016.
Lerer Hippeau Ventures has invested in three artificial intelligence startups, DigitalGenius, Poncho, and X.ai;
Khosla Ventures invests in three artificial intelligence startups, Zebra Medical Vision, Lumiata, and Cylance
Bain Capital Ventures also invested in three artificial intelligence startups, Troo.ly, Persado, and Apixio.
If you extend the time span, you will find that in the past five years, Khosla Ventures is still the most active venture capital company in the field of artificial intelligence. Since 2011, they have invested in more than 15 artificial intelligence startups. This was followed by two VCs, Data Collective and Intel Capital.
From the first quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2016, rankings of the most active VC companies and investors in the field of artificial intelligence
VIA CB