China Money Network, a Chinese investment and technology media and data company based in Hong Kong and Beijing, today launched a campaign to compile a list of the 50 leading Chinese artificial intelligence companies to shed light on China's rising AI power. Called the China AI Top 50, the list will be released at the World Economic Forum 2018 Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin city, China on September 18 to 20, in front of top-level government officials, influential business leaders and international media organizations. "China Money Network tracks China's technology and venture capital industry daily, providing intelligence and data to our international audience on what may soon be the world's center of venture capital and technology development," says Nina Xiang, founder of China Money Network. "Despite the growth, there is a lack of solid research and data on the most important tech sectors in China. We will fill that knowledge gap by visiting all of these companies' offices and factories, talking to their founders and staff members, as well as mining our own proprietary data accumulated over the years on this industry."

Over the past few weeks Fortune colleagues and I have written at length about China's rise as an "innovation superpower," particularly in sectors involving the Internet, e-commerce and mobile payment. We've marveled at the scale of China's two largest tech giants, Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings, and extolled the creativity and convenience of the multitude of the services they offer. Some of you have written to remind us of Beijing's strict censorship of the Internet. Even so, my view remains that China has emerged as the biggest, liveliest and most sophisticated digital marketplace in the world. But I've also expressed unease in this space about the fact that in China's tech sector, even more than in America's, an enormous amount of market power is concentrated in the hands of a few giant firms, with few safeguards for individual privacy.

Chinese tech companies City Cloud and SoundAI have successfully raised $30 million and $15 million in separate funding rounds respectively. Cisco Investments and Country Garden Holdings co-led a $30 million (RMB200 million) Series B round in City Cloud International, a Hangzhou-based company focused on cloud computing and Big Data technologies, China Money Network reported. City Cloud disclosed the latest investment during the company's fifth anniversary, along with RMB500 million worth of credit from several banks. The company develops and sells Smart Connected Communities platforms and cloud computing services. It has subsidiaries in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Hong Kong.

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Baidu Inc. has established an early stage investment unit named Baidu Venture to back artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality projects. The fund will initially seek to raise US 200 million in capital for the effort. Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu, will lead the venture unit as chairman and participate in project evaluation and investment decisions, Chinese media reported. The new venture unit will be independently run from Baidu's existing investment teams, allowing it to make fast decisions without having to go through complicated internal approval process. Baidu established a deep learning research institute as early as 2013, making artificial intelligence a key strategic focuse to shape the company's future.

CloudMinds, a cloud robotics start-up founded by the former head of the research division of China Mobile, has raised US 30 million seed financing from SB China Capital (SBCVC), Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., Walden International and Kaixuan Capital. Cloud robotics is an emerging field of robotics rooted in cloud computing and cloud storage centered around the benefits of converged infrastructure and shared services. Huang Xiaoqing left the Research Institution of China Mobile last March to launch CloudMinds, according to an article published by Caixin Media. "A robot with similar capabilities of a real human requires a computer system that may be one million times bigger in size than that of a human brain, which means the brain of a robot must be on the cloud," Huang told the Chinese media organization. CloudMinds is targeting to reveal a full-service housekeeping robot in 2025 to service individual families.