Though the AI scene in Singapore is still at quite an emerging stage, I’ve observed some notable projects and startups in recent months

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Though the artificial intelligence (AI) scene in Singapore is still at quite an emerging stage, I’ve observed some notable projects and startups in recent months. With an investor’s perspective, I’m trying to gain a more holistic understanding of AI startups based in Singapore.

Here are my broad observations:

Ambiguity around the definition of AI is similar to what the fintech industry went through during the nascent stages of its development and transformation. As a result, companies pick and choose how they want to position themselves. For example, one such company chooses to be called a fintech company even though they offer AI solutions.
Fintech companies are high adopters of AI (and usually have it in their stage 2 or 3 development plans). At LATTICE80, where only fintech startups gather, increasing numbers of them are trying or considering to integrate AI into their products and services. Since the finance industry has been accumulating refined data of customers and transactions and experiencing AI-like technology via quant trading, they are quite open to it.
Many Big Data or Analytics companies are positioning themselves as AI companies. Some of them are trying to adapt to AI components, while others are just positioning themselves as AI companies. Of course, these phenomena represent how much AI is trending at present. Investors should look into startups calling themselves “AI related” or “AI focused”.
Many AI startups are adopting an “AI-as-a-Service” model to avoid limiting themselves to any one industry or sector, unclear where customer demand will come from over the short to mid term.
Lack of talent for AI has become a reality. It is not easy to find the right engineers with relevant experience for AI projects. I think that more than 3-5 years will be needed to meet the growing demand from the industry.

Below are some that have attracted my interest.

AI startups based in Singapore (in no particular order below):

Taiger

Founders’ name: Sinuhe Arroyo
Funding info: US$5.8 million
Key business idea/sector: Applied artificial intelligence (AI) solutions
Goals: To push Singapore’s AI capabilities forward in line with the country’s “Smart Nation” initiative

JobTech

Founders’ name: Charlotte Lim
Funding info: Undisclosed
Key business idea/sector: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data analytics
Goals: To provide complete and accurate (duplicate job posts are detected and sifted out by JobTech’s proprietary natural language and text analytics technology) visibility of online jobs market around the world.

Active.ai

Founders’ name: Ravi Shankar
Funding info: US$3.5 million
Key business idea/sector: Artificial intelligence (AI) for Conversational banking services
Goals: Help banks redefine their digital strategy for the future, bringing in automation and insightful customer engagement.

Nugit

Founders’ name: Dave Sanderson
Funding info: US$5.2 million
Key business idea/sector: Business intelligence
Goals: Transforms business data into decision ready reports which are easy for people to understand and share.

Vi Dimensions

Founders’ name: Raymond Looi
Funding info: US$1.5 million
Key business idea/sector: Big Data and Machine Learning in surveillance
Goals: A better way to mine thousands of surveillance cameras for information autonomously in real-time.

Discuss here: Is Artificial Intelligence an existential risk to humanity?

Visenze

Founders’ name: Oliver Tan
Funding info: US$14 million
Key business idea/sector: Artificial Intelligence in visual search and image recognition.
Goals: Simplify the visual web through artificial intelligence.

Cashield

Founders’ name: Wee Chian (Justin) Lie
Funding info: US$5.5 million
Key business idea/sector: Fraud Detection, Security, Payments
Goals: Enterprise risk management company that helps companies manage their risks from fraudulent payments and hostile accounts.

Tookitaki

Founders’ name: Abhishek Chaterjee
Funding info: US$1.23 million
Key business idea/sector: Social Media, Advertising, Marketing Automation
Goals: Data intelligence startup focused on consumer behaviour discovery and prediction.

BluePool

Founders’ name: Samir Rath
Funding info: Undisclosed
Key business idea/sector: Machine Intelligence, Capital Markets
Goals: Revenue generating Signals for the Capital Markets Industry.

Jumper.AI

Founders’ name: Yash Kotak & Nyha Shree
Funding info: Undisclosed
Key business idea/sector: Social Media Marketing, Artificial Intelligence, Information Technology
Goals: Commerce enabler that helps entrepreneurs to sell their products instantly on social media with comments.

Advance AI

Founders’ name: Xiaoguang Wang (founder), Jefferson Chen (CEO), Chun Dong Chau (Chief Scientific Officer)
Funding info: Undisclosed
Key business idea/sector: Consumer credit, credit scoring, anti-fraud
Solutions: Face & Voice Recognition, Identity checks, call data analysis capabilities
Goals: Seamless (secure) consumer credit loans by banks to individuals

Tuple Technologies

Founders’ name: Santhosh Nagaiah (Co-founder & CMO), Anmol Mohan (Co-founder and CEO), Neha Singh (Co-founder & COO), Raymond Lim (Co-founder & CCO)
Funding info: Undisclosed
Key business idea/sector: consumer behaviour AI for e-commerce amongst others.
Solutions: Predictive AI (vs. Descriptive AI)
Goals: Data and Analytics AI company with predictive analysis on consumer behavior (e-commerce).

Sentient.io

Founders’ name: Christopher Yeo
Funding info: Undisclosed
Key business idea/sector: Digital Assistants, Financial Compliance, Smart Farming
Goals: AI as a service (Aaas) and serve sophisticated solutions across diverse industries.

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