Keep-on investing in AI, by world’s largest VC investor SoftBank Vision Fund

3 innovation and digital news in 1 minute. Every Monday. Episode 292

News 1. AI human China — Xmov

China is more and more specialising and leading in AI and human, face recognition and construction. With the two leaders Face++ (Megvii) and SenseTime, now there is Xmov. Xmov is a software to develop 1/ avatars 2/ AI human (avatar and bot in one) and 3/ virtual content. Opinion: China is more and more specialising and leading in AI-based computer vision. With the two leaders Face++ (Megvii) and SenseTime, now there is Xmov. Based in Shanghai, the company has just raised a “booster” of 100m by Softbank Vision Fund (SVF).

Chinese market of metaverse and AI-based avatars of a sort is estimated in trillions. Xmov will be winner.

News 2. Observe.ai for a breakthrough in call centre software

This has been a challenge and a big source of investment in the last 5 years, Artificial Intelligence for call centres. Observe.ai aligns to this with the ambition of a breakthrough. Above all in ‘reading’ more customer conversations, in machine processes, and in post-call actions and suggestions. Just raised $125 million from SoftBank. Opinion: The approach is Observe.ai is consistent and unique, it focuses on a a-priori contradictory objective — good customer experience (CX) and artificial intelligence (AI). CX x AI. This is based above all on an increased reading and understanding of conversations. ALL conversations! The process they claim makes sense: Understand, Empower, Improve.

A breakthrough in call centre AI, difficult to believe, but this one certainly is a contender for that race.

News 3. Better pipelines with 6sense

6sense has been on the market for 9 years, but is growing into a shooting star with 2021–2022 large fundings ($426m) and 3 acquisitions. It is a platform where customers can measure and identify revenue opportunities in B2B — in sales pipelines. Based on different inputs, applying machine learning. Above all 6sense detects what they call the “dark funnel” — potential buyers conducting anonymous research. Opinion: Similar to Observe.ai, key is how much data there is and how much the AI can read. The pipeline in that case is read in detail. And even “hidden” propensity to buy is detected. Lots of high profile investors (Salesforce, Bain, Owl, and the omnipotent SVF)

Remember that name “6sense”

Author is the research team (10 trend scouters) at specialist Space and Lemon Innovations (Hamburg, Berlin) — scouting innovations in main tech geographies, AI development, virtual worlds and e-commerce. Excerpts of research are gathered here in original weekly news since 2016, always with an opinion — no re-write of TechCrunch.

Come back next Monday and share your opinion.