Google has made a rare company’s cumulative funding up to JPY6 billion ($53 million) in Japan after the company led a follow-on round (C round) for AI and machine learning startup Tokyo-based ABEJA.
The core offering ABEJA is a PaaS (platform as a service) that uses machine learning to help over 150 companies develop business analysis and insight from their data piles. There is a specialist product for retail stores which hones in on customer and retail data – that’s used by some 100 corporate customers, according to ABEJA. ABEJA’s PaaS PLATFORM that integrate state-of-the-art AI technologies including IoT, big data and deep learning and enables to carry out sophisticated analyses with accumulated data. Also, on the basis of the platform, we offer variety of services optimized for each industries, especially for Retail, Manufacture, Infrastructure.
ABEJA Founded in September of 2012, followed by graduation from the 1st batch of the Orange Fab Asia acceleration program, Abeja has raised an undisclosed sum in an angel and a seed round. Subsequently, the company has raised six figures in US dollars from Salesforce in a series A round back in 2014, followed by securing 700 million yen (about $7 million at the exchange rate then) in a series B round from INCJ, Archetype, Inspire-PNB Partners back in 2016 as well as securing 4.25 billion yen ($38.4 million at the exchange rate then) in a series C round from 9 investors including VC firms and business companies back in June this year.
“Going forward, ABEJA and Google will collaborate on AI and ML solutions across various sectors, including retail and manufacturing, driving the application of AI solutions, along with further growth in the Japanese AI sector,” ABEJA said in a statement.
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