Voice Recognition Service Yunzhisheng Raised 100 million yuan In Series A Financing, Released Z Watch

Yunzhisheng, a Chinese voice recognition startup, secured tens of millions of dollars from a domestic venture capital, citing people familiar with the matter (report in Chinese). [Update: On September 19th the company has announced the financing, 100 million yuan, led by Qiming Ventures.]

The company kicked off voice recognition public cloud last September, becoming the second domestic company to open up this technology to the public after USTC iFlytek. Baidu followed the suit this August.

Yunzhisheng now cooperates with Leshi Super TV, smartwatch inWatch, Smartisan ROM, Sougou Voice Aid and NetEase’s EasyChat. It also developed voice plug-ins for WeChat. Additionally, Yunzhisheng have already rolled out three independent apps, namely Voice Aid, Yunzhisheng Voice and Yunzhisheng Input method.

The accuracy rate of the company’s voice recognition products reached 95%, on par with the technologies developed by arch-rivals of A-share listed USTC iFlytek and Baidu, two deep-pocked giants.

Yunzhisheng aims to launch in-depth cooperation with professional institutions, auto manufacturer, smart furniture and wearable device producers in the future.

Although the source declined to disclose the detail of the funding, this capital injection indeed will level up the entering threshold of voice recognition industry, accelerating its development towards a stage of oligopolistic competition.

Yunzhisheng recently launched a smartwatch Z Watch with a Chinese warble electronics brand Smartdevices. The company integrated its voice recognition technologies into the new product, solving the problems commonly encountered in human-machine interaction and input methods due to the small screen size of smartwatch. The gadget is priced at 699 yuan, much lower than Shanda Geak’s 1,999 yuan (report in Chinese).

image credit: NetEase