Gorilla Technology Bags $15 Million Series D Funding from SBI Group

Taiwan is going all out to woo investors. Lately, there's has been an influx of startups that are making global news. Now it's the Taipei-based company Gorilla Technology Group, which has been recently in the limelight.

The Edge AI and computer vision solutions provider has secured $15 million in D-round funding from SBI Investment, a subsidiary of the SBI Group, which is Japan's leading financial services company and is also a global leader in making active investments in fintech, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain.

Improving AI and Video Analytics Algorithms

This new round of funding comes ahead of Gorilla Technology's announced participation at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) conference in Las Vegas. The funding marks SBI Investment's first investment in a Taiwanese, AI-focused company and will give the investment firm a minority stake in the company. Gorilla Technology plans to use the investment to enhance their AI and video analytics algorithms for the financial tech space, work toward cementing a worldwide sales and marketing presence, as well as expand the company footprint in Japanese markets.

Commenting on the investment, Tomoyuki Nii, executive officer of SBI Investment said, "SBI's investment follows the establishment of SBI AI &Blockchain Fund (SBI A&B Fund) earlier this year. The SBI Group is actively involved in introducing AI solutions to financial institutions in Japan, and strongly believes in the future of this field."

Shaping the AI Revolution

Established in 2001, Gorilla Technology is a global leader in video intelligence, network intelligence and IoT technology. They develop a wide range of video-centric and content management applications including smart retail, smart school, smart enterprise, smart surveillance and broadcast media. In addition, the company provides a complete security convergence solution to government institutes, telecom companies and private enterprises with network surveillance and cyber security.

Gorilla Technology approached SBI Group based on its work creating viable solutions for Edge AI, where edge devices process priority AI algorithms locally, and allow real-time intelligent results, while cloud and server-based AI is coordinated over a smart and optimized network connection. Based on its future AI vision, the Taiwanese company was also recently certified on Intel's OpenVINO toolkit, which the company has currently utilized successfully to further improve computer vision and video analytics in the manufacturing, retail, healthcare and transportation industries.

"Financial companies worldwide have started tapping on the video analytics and facial recognition door as cybersecurity threats continue to grow and expand in 2019. We are committed to creating new avenues of success and security for the fintech markets, and we strongly believe the next natural step is to expand Edge AI, computer vision and Data-as-a-Service (DaaS)," said Dr. Spincer Koh, chief executive officer, Gorilla Technology.

Koh also believes that the investment will strengthen their position as an Edge AI leader.

"It's a key driver toward our goals in video analytics technology, and keeps Gorilla positioned at the forefront of video AI technology. We can't wait to see what the future holds," he added.