Taiwan’s Gorilla Technology has raised $15 million in D-round funding from SBI Investment, a subsidiary of the Japan’s financial services company SBI Group.
The funding marks SBI’s first investment in a Taiwanese, AI-focused company and will give SBI Group a minority stake in Gorilla Technology, which develops its own AI and video analytic platforms from its research and development facility in Taiwan.
Headquartered in Taipei, the company is an SaaS and software provider specializing in video technology and analytics.
Its technology supports a wide range of video-centric and content management applications, including Smart Retail, Smart School, Smart Enterprise, Smart Surveillance, and broadcast media.
Gorilla said it plans to use the investment from SBI Group to enhance their AI and video analytics algorithms for the financial tech space.
Dr. Spincer Koh, CEO of Gorilla Technology, said that 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,” he said.
In June this year, Intel announced Gorilla as the first certified video analytic solution on Intel's OpenVINO IoT toolkit.
Gorilla said it will continue to deepen their relationships with the SBI Group, Intel and other partners to bring Edge AI and computer vision to the next level in system integration.
Tomoyuki Nii, Executive Officer of SBI Investment, said that SBI's investment in Gorilla 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,” he said.
Gorilla Technology successfully completed A, B, and C investment rounds in 2007, 2009, and 2015, respectively, by tapping EMC for A and B rounds, while Telstra Ventures and Acer were the main C round investors.
