Mar 22, 2016

Samsung Is a Business That Makes Fourth Most Investments into Artificial Intelligence Mar 22, 2016 kor Samsung is surveyed as a business that makes fourth most investments into artificial intelligence (AI) field in the world. According to CB Insight, which is a business that specializes in investment research of venture companies, Samsung had made fourth most investments into AI companies out of all global businesses. AI has been receiving a lot of attention recently after Go match between Lee Se-dol and AlphaGo. Although there are a lot of evaluations that South Korea’s response to AI is bit slow compared to this, Samsung has been making steady investments into fields that are related to AI. CB Insight did not enclose amount of investments that are made by Samsung and top 3 businesses. However because Google and Facebook are making the most active businesses that are growing their AI businesses, it is assumed that they are lined up in top rankings. Through Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, Samsung has invested into AI development start-up companies such as Vicarious, Idibon, Expect Labs, Reactor Labs, Automated Insights, Maluuba, Kngine and others. Vicarious, which is a business that is located in Silicon Valley, is a business that holds original technologies in AI. By theorizing calculation principles that brain holds, it is artificially making an intelligence like human’s intelligence. Vicarious is a globally promising AI business as it also received investments from CEO Mark Zuckerberg of Faacebook, CEO Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Elon Musk who is the founder of Tesla Motors, Jerry Yang who is the co-founder of Yahoo and others. Samsung invested about $20 million (about 23.2 billion KRW) into Vicarious. <Artificial Intelligence Etnews DB> Idibon is a business that develops a technology that deducts important information from text data that is needed for users by using a natural language processing technology that is based on Cloud. Including Samsung, Idibon also received $5.5 million (about 6.4 billion KRW) in investments from Altpoint Ventures, Khosla Ventures and others. Expect Labs, which received investments from Samsung in 2013, develops interface that recognizes users’ voice from devices that are used by a person or a business by using a natural language processing technology and voice recognition technology. This technology recognizes information from communication in real-time and analyzes and collects data. Expect Labs has an original technology in ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) that is based on natural language which finds related information in advance. “We are going to continue to focus on promising businesses that are related to AI and invest into them.” said President Lee Sun-jong of Samsung Venture Investment Corporation. According to a global market research company called IDC, global AI market was worth about $127 billion (147.7299 trillion KRW) in 2015 and will grow at an annual average rate of 14.0%. It will be worth $165 billion (191.9280 trillion KRW) in next year. In South Korea, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Hyundai Cars, SK Telecom, KT, and Naver will co-participate under guidance from Ministry of Science, ICP and Future Planning, establish an intelligence information technology research institute, and attract $2.15 billion (2.5 trillion KRW) from private businesses along with $860 million (1 trillion KRW) of investments for next 5 years. Staff Reporter Park, Sora | srpark@etnews.com <■AI venture companies that received investments from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation▲Vicarious, which is a business that holds original technology in AI, is trying to develop AI that is like a human brain by theorizing calculation principles that a human’s brain has.▲Idibon is a business that develops a technology that deducts important information from text data that is needed for users by using a natural language processing technology that is based on Cloud.▲Expect Labs (MindMeld) is a business that develops an interface that recognizes users’ voice from devices that are used by a person or a business by using a natural language processing technology and voice recognition technology.▲Reactor Labs is a business that manufactures Winston app that provides personalized news to users and provides briefing after shortening information from news by a minute or two.▲Automated Insights is a business that develops a service that changes Big Data such as e-commerce, media, real estate, finance, marketing, sales and others into narrative words.▲Maluuba is a business that provides an intelligent personal assistance service that has a natural language processing technology within androids.▲Kngine is a business that provides semantic search engine that has a natural language processing technology through online and mobile and deducts most optimum answers that correspond to questions from users.>