Media

HKU spin-off artificial intelligence startup closes Series Pre-A round led by Horizons Ventures

28 Nov 2017

 

(Issued on behalf of Technology Transfer Office / Versitech Limited, HKU)

Fano Labs, a Hong Kong based artificial intelligence (AI) startup specialising in speech and natural language processing (NLP) technologies and a spin-off from the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has raised a Series Pre-A round led by Horizons Ventures. The size of the deal was undisclosed.

The establishment of Fano Labs was facilitated by the HKU Technology Transfer Office. The company was co-founded in 2015 by Dr Miles Wen, a PhD graduate from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and a former Fulbright Scholar at University of California, Berkeley and Professor Victor O.K. Li, Chair of Information Engineering and Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) at HKU. Prior to this round, the company has been backed by angel investors, HKU, Hong Kong Science Park (HKSTP), Innovation and Technology Commission of HKSAR, and Zeroth.ai. Dr Albert Lam, Honorary Assistant Professor of the Department of EEE at HKU and an expert in AI and smart city, recently joined the company as Chief Scientist, too.

With Fano Labs’ technical focus in Chinese dialects processing and analysis, the funds raised will fuel the company’s expansion into the billion-dollar Chinese call center industry, where many of these calls are in various Chinese dialects. The proprietary AI system developed by Fano Labs would enable companies to have better quality control over their call centers, listen to all the recorded phone calls, analyse them and provide managers with valuable business intelligence. As of today, the company has already developed speech and NLP technologies for Cantonese and Sichuanese, in addition to English and Mandarin, and signed some of Asia’s largest enterprises, including property developers, utility companies and telecommunication companies.

“We have been using deep learning to develop speech and NLP technologies for Chinese dialects and the results by far have been very impressive. Deep learning is a family of feature-based machine learning methods and has been applied in many different fields of AI. In addition to the speech and NLP, in our research lab, we also use these technologies to help the society solve the air pollution problems. We hope that we could use our technologies to create positive impacts to the society”, said Professor Li, co-founder of Fano Labs.

HKU Vice President (Research) Professor Andy Hor said: “Industry partnership and creating university spin off companies are the critical activities to create impact from the university’s technologies. We are putting more efforts on these activities in addition to our traditional strengths in education and research. The technologies of Fano Labs are based on the university’s core capabilities on language recognition and the company has demonstrated how university’s technologies can address the key industry issues. This is an excellent example.”

Horizons Ventures is the private investment arm of Mr. Li Ka-shing. It is a leading investor in some of the world’s most innovative companies and disruptive technologies, including Facebook, Spotify, Impossible Foods, Improbable, Zoom, Blockstream, Soul Machines and ChromaDex.

Fano Labs is the first company that Horizons has invested in Hong Kong.

About Technology Transfer Office / Versitech Limited, HKU
The Technology Transfer Office (TTO) manages the use of the intellectual property assets of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) by providing patenting, licensing, and other commercialisation support to the University’s researchers. Acting as the bridge linking HKU to society in the area of technology commercialisation, TTO facilitates industries and businesses to access HKU’s powerhouse of knowledge, innovation, and expertise through close collaboration.  Website: http://www.tto.hku.hk. 

Versitech Limited is the commercial arm of the University. It operates on a non-profit making basis to promote technology innovations by HKU researchers. Website：http://www.versitech.hku.hk/.

About Fano Labs Limited
Fano Labs is a Hong Kong-based artificial intelligence startup specializing in speech recognition and natural language processing technologies. With the technical focus in Chinese dialects processing and analysis, Fano Labs helps enterprises conduct quality assurance and data mining in their call centers. Fano Labs is a spin-off from University of Hong Kong and operates both in Hong Kong and China. Website: fano.ai.

Please click here for the press release by Fano Labs.

For media enquiries, please contact Dr Miles Wen (miles@fano.ai, +852 3543 1189)