Aiello Inc.
Taiwan’s Aiello Raises $5.8 Million to Expand Voice AI Solutions Overseas JAFCO Asia and Wistron Participate in Latest Round Focusing on Aiello’s Natural Language Understanding Technology
Aiello Inc. (Headquarters: Taiwan, Representative Director: Mr. Vic Shen), a leading company in natural language processing and voice AI technology, is a joint venture between JAFCO Asia (a group of JAFCO Group Co., Ltd.) and Wistron (Taiwan). It raised US$5.8 million (approximately ¥841 million) in a pre-series A+ round it led. Aiello’s “Aiello Voice Assistant (AVA)” is a state-of-the-art NLU (Natural Language Understanding)-based solution specialized for the hospitality industry. The funds raised this time will be used to accelerate business in Japan and Thailand for the purpose of overseas expansion. In addition, we plan to strengthen our research and development and release a new product “Intelligence Conversation Platform” aimed at improving the efficiency of corporate sales and meetings.
Aiello Inc. (Headquarters: Taiwan, Representative Director: Mr. Vic Shen), a leading company in natural language processing and voice AI technology, is a joint venture between JAFCO Asia (a group of JAFCO Group Co., Ltd.) and Wistron (Taiwan). It raised US$5.8 million (approximately ¥841 million) in a pre-series A+ round it led. Existing investor Cornerstone Ventures also participated in this latest round. Aiello has raised a total of over US$10 million (approximately ¥1.45 billion) in the four years since its founding.
JAFCO Asia is a group company of JAFCO Group Co., Ltd., a leading Japanese venture capital firm. Over the past 30 years, JAFCO Asia has invested in over 500 companies and achieved over 115 IPOs. JAFCO Asia (President & CEO: Yoshiyuki Shibusawa) said, “Aiello is an AI startup with a business model that has continuity and scalability. In the post-COIVD era, DX (digital transformation) is an irreversible megatrend. Demand for artificial intelligence and smart speakers is expected to grow further in the business/life scene, and the company will play an important role.”
Aiello founder and CEO Vic Shen commented: We are very pleased to have JAFCO Asia and Wistron join us as investors in Aiello. We are confident that the strong network and knowledge of both companies will lead Aiello to the next stage of growth. The funds raised this time will be used to accelerate business in Japan and Thailand for the purpose of overseas expansion. In addition, we will strengthen research and development and release a new product, “Intelligence Conversation Platform”, aimed at improving the efficiency of corporate sales and meetings. This platform, which has strengths in speech and sound analysis using AI, is scheduled to be available by the end of this year.”
Aiello closed a pre-series A round last year with co-lead investor Chunghwa PCHome, a venture capital fund established as a joint venture by Chunghwa Telecom Group and PCHOME Online Inc. The fund is comprised of Cornerstone Ventures, Zylux Acoustic Corporation, and Colopl Next, the corporate venture capital (CVC) of publicly traded game company Colopl. This is the first time for Colopl Next to invest in an AI startup in Taiwan.
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[Image] “Aiello Voice Assistant (AVA)” has been introduced to several international hotel brands in Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Aiello’s “Aiello Voice Assistant (AVA)” is a state-of-the-art NLU (Natural Language Understanding)-based solution specialized for the hospitality industry. The core technology is natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) models from the founding team from Google, Qualcomm and HTC. Targeting the pain point of the hotel industry, it is characterized by “ease of use that can reach the itch”.
Using AVA, guests can set alarms and adjust air conditioning and lighting simply by speaking. In addition, you can ask for room service or information such as nearby tourist attractions by voice. As a result, we are able to provide the best butler service to our guests. According to Vic, “According to data, the burden of front desk operations has been reduced by about 30% at hotels that have introduced AVA. In the case of a hotel with 200 rooms, this is equivalent to more than 300 hours of work in six months.” Shen said. [Image 2
[Image] Vic Shen, founder and CEO of Aiello Inc., aims to expand into international markets by leveraging its investor track record in Japan and its expertise in software and hardware solutions.
In addition, some hotels have seen a 10-fold increase in exposure on social media after AVA became a hot topic on the Internet. At the same time, it also leads to hotel upsells, increasing room rates and guest loyalty. In addition, we support DX in the hotel industry by visualizing various needs and behaviors of travelers during their stay through data analysis and extracting data useful for management improvement.
AVA currently ingests over 900,000 monthly voice and text interactions in Chinese, English, Thai, and Japanese.
Installation is easy and you can have your AVA installed in less than a week. AVA was born four years ago and has already been installed in 8,000 hotel rooms (approximately 60 hotels) in Taiwan. As a new standard for 4-star and above hotels, 5-star hotels such as Le Méridien Taipei, Sun Moon Lake Frode Chine Hotel, and Kaohsiung Intercontinental Hotel have also adopted it. In the last six months, when the new coronavirus overseas has calmed down, we have
successfully entered international hotel groups in Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, and the number of contracted rooms this year is 2.5 times that of last year, showing remarkable growth. Expected. For more information, please visit https://aiello.ai/jp/product-spot-jp/. Details about this release:
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000002.000102975.html
