After a recent $200 million funding round from top Chinese venture capital firms, Shenzhen-based AI startup SmartMore has big plans to go public and expand across Southeast Asia, starting with Singapore. The funding round, closed in June, included existing investors Sequoia Capital China, Lenovo Capital and Forbes Midas listee Anna Fang's ZhenFund. IDG Capital, CoStone Capital and Green Pine Capital Partners also participated in the round. The two-year-old startup is now valued at more than $1 billion, says Li Ruiyu, cofounder and head of product, in a video interview. "This round of funding will be used to penetrate deeper into our market, increase investment in R&D, and drive large-scale implementation of our intelligent manufacturing solutions," says Li, 28, who made the 30 Under 30 Asia list this year.

Chinese indoor delivery robot startup PuduTech received two significant investments in less than two months, in a clear sign that investors are betting on a future in which robot-staffed hospitals, restaurants and hotels are commonplace. The Shenzhen-based company, whose products have been used for meal and drug deliveries without direct human to human contact in some Chinese hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic, said on Wednesday that it has closed a nearly 100 million yuan ($14.5 million) series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital China. Other investors include the company's early financial backer Meituan Dianping, a Chinese lifestyle service and food delivery giant that invested more than 100 million yuan in PuduTech in early July. Meituan itself is also looking to a future of completely autonomous deliveries to reduce labor costs, with such services by robots or drones having already been piloted in some parts of China. The capital raised from the fresh financing round will be used to explore new markets for its robots designed for restaurants and develop new scenarios where its products can be applied, according to PuduTech CEO Zhang Tao.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Intuition Robotics, an Israeli developer of artificial intelligence robots for use by the elderly, said on Tuesday it raised $14 million in an early stage funding round led by the Toyota Research Institute (TRI).

The four founders, two of whom have resigned their professorships to devote their full attention to TwentyBN, met each other during studies at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. Each of the founders has over 15 years of experience in machine learning and the relatively young deep learning discipline. Prof. Dr. Roland Memisevic, Chief Scientist, received his doctorate in Toronto, studying with Geoffrey Hinton, one of the founding fathers of deep learning. Prior to co-founding Twenty Billion Neurons, Memisevic was a member of the faculty at the renowned Machine Learning Institute of the University of Montréal led by Yoshua Bengio. The institute counts Google, Facebook, and IBM amongst its most active donors.