Singapore-based AI solutions startup, Taiger, has successfully closed its Series A investment round with $5.8 million (SGD $8 million) funding led by Tembusu ICT Fund I and SGInnovate. The funding is in line with Singapore’s Smart Nation Initiative; pushing the country’s AI capabilities forward. According to industry reports, Taiger will be using the funds to ramp up its R&D and sales in Singapore and is aiming to expand globally.
About two years back the startup was based in Madrid and had opened its regional base in Singapore expecting to tap into the country’s Smart Nation initiative. At that time the company aimed to provide its technology to the Singapore government agencies and corporations to ‘humanize’ digital interactions with users.
Taiger claims to specialize in information access and knowledge extraction. It applies a hybrid between the symbolic and probabilistic disciplines of AI and its solutions are taught to read and understand information as a human worker does. The idea is to transform completely unstructured information to valuable knowledge for businesses and their customers.
Tembusu ICT Fund I, the lead investor in the firm is one of the six funds selected by the National Research Foundation of Singapore as part of the Early Stage Venture Fund II scheme. It is also the only deep-tech software-focused venture capital fund in the country. SGInnovate, on the other hand is a government-owned entity which operates under the National Research Foundation as a deep-tech collaboration center.
Taiger states that while most of the companies in AI are focusing on machine learning, it is taking a humanistic approach to AI and is now set to further solidify its lead in the field. The company’s iMatch solution is capable of automatically extracting, validating and interpreting information from documents, replicating the intelligence of a human worker.
“We’re talking about drastic reduction in cost, huge productivity gains, and of course, allowing workers to focus on higher-value work. We’re definitely excited to have Tembusu Partners and SGInnovate on board. Taiger’s vision is very much aligned with Singapore’s Smart Nation Initiative,” said Dr. Sinuhe Arroyo, CEO and Founder, Taiger.
“We’re honored to be recently awarded the accreditation status by the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA) and partnering them to contribute to Singapore’s digital transformation. With funding secured, we can now focus on pumping up our sales and R&D efforts here in Singapore and expanding our presence worldwide.”
The company was founded in 2009 and specialized in developing “humanistic” virtual assistants.In 2015 Taiger has come out with an intelligent virtual assistant called iConverse. It used AI around semantic and Natural Language Processing technology to understand users’ spoken and written inputs, convert them into natural language and would speak to them. iConverse was integrated into Singapore government’s public housing projects. Currently Build-to-Order and season parking programs are using the chatbot.
The startup has also created a search engine called iSearch built on its patented AI core. According to the company, the search engine exploits the meaning of information rather than words to recover documents more effectively and precisely, cutting out the time and costs associated with poring through the results of traditional search engines.
Brijesh Pande, Managing Partner, Tembusu ICT Fund I, said, “Taiger integrates the latest technologies in AI and semantic computing, enabling them to create innovative, contextually relevant and highly scalable deep learning solutions in areas such as information extraction, virtual assistants and enterprise search. We are proud to partner with Taiger to support the next phase of their exciting journey.”