Laiye, an enterprise technology company based in Beijing last week announced a merger with Chinese RPA company UiBot. The merged company, which will retain the name Laiye, then received $35 million in a Series B round led by Cathay Innovation. Wu Capital and Lightspeed China Partners also participated in the investment.
Four-year old Laiye has focused on AI-enabled chatbots but sees synergies between that technology and RPA. The merged company, using the proceeds of its Series B, will explore those synergies. Laiye’s chairman and CEO, Guanchun Wang, told Tech Crunch that company will use the capital infusion to enable clients to “build bots with both brains and hands so as to significantly improve operational efficiency and reduce labor costs.”
Wang said the cash will enable it to bolster R&D and sales staff for its RPA products. It also will invest in natural language processing, deep learning and reinforcement learning.