China’s Terminus Technologies Raises $283M For Smart City Development

The cross-border investment and asset management firm China Everbright Limited is leading a $283 million Series C1 funding round for Terminus Technologies, Deal Street Asia reported on Tuesday (Aug. 13).

Artificial intelligence provider Terminus Technologies will use the money for further development and additional staffing. The funding round also included investments by China’s eCommerce giant JD.com, real estate developer Wanda Group and voice recognition technology developer iFlytek.

Incubated by Everbright Holdings, Terminus Technologies is planning to build China’s biggest urban-level AI platform for urban management, population management and construction, the news outlet said.

Since its founding in 2015, Terminus Technologies has maintained an average annual growth rate of over 200 percent. Its R&D centers are located in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Wuhan, Shenzhen and others, with more than 8,400 projects across the country.

In January, China Everbright Ltd announced the final close of its North America- and Europe-focused investment vehicle, CEL Global Investment Fund, at $539 million. The vehicle, which launched in the second quarter of 2016, primarily invests in companies located in North America, Europe and Asia that have a sound business model and strong growth in China.

China is set to overtake the U.S. in data generation by 2025 and will outpace average global data generation by 3 percent a year. In 2018, China generated 7.6 zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is around one trillion gigabytes). By 2025, that amount is expected to grow to 48.6ZB. The U.S., for its part, generated 6.9ZB last year, and that number is projected to grow to 30.6ZB by 2025.

By way of example, eCommerce giants Tencent and Alibaba targeted traditional banking services with their WeChat Pay and Alipay services. They leveraged years of collected data to create personalized services for their customers.

IDC analysts said data will be paramount to building next-generation technology like machine learning, IoT applications and AI.