China Builds AI-Based Monitoring System For Smart Cities

BEIJING — Chinese AI startup, ‘Supremind Intelligent Technology,’ managed to raise almost $14.6 million dollars (100 million yuan) in its pre-series A round of funding.

Creo Capital, its largest investor, is the finance wing of Hong Kong conglomerate, ‘New World Development.’ In response, ‘Linear Venture’ and ‘Redpoint Ventures China,’ also invested more in the Chinese AI startup.

Supremind’s goal is to ‘enhance industrial solutions, product lineups, and technical development with NWS Holdings.’ NWS is the infrastructure wing of its main partner New World Development. Supremind will also use the money to expand its business sphere and increase its market share.

Founded in 2019, Supremind’s core members have been taken part in the research and development of video deep learning, still images, and large-scale systems of application for over a decade. The company takes on problems that face urban areas. The company does so by leveraging AI technology and video analysis.

The company focuses on 5 key product areas. Those are urban governance, passenger traffic control, transportation management, public service administration systems, and internet content censoring. Supremind’s products and services have been adopted by over 200 Chinese cities, already. Its most popular products are related to smart transportation and have been implemented in more than 100 cities.

Local governments such as Zhejiang Province and Shanghai City have adopted Supremind’s Urban governance solutions. Also, the company’s public service administration is in use by several public security systems departments in Shanghai. Supremind’s internet content censoring platform is used widely across China by Offices of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs.

Human-intensive video monitoring is ineffective and inefficient. Because of this, traffic management has become pretty difficult and has led to accidents occurring more frequently,

Using NWS Holdings’ data resources regarding transportation and road systems, Supremind developed its VisionMind platform. VisionMind enables more efficient highway management by analyzing and identifying a ton of data. The system is able to identify accidents, illegal acts, traffic volume, and specialized vehicles.

Supremind is expecting that sales from its smart transportation management system will make up the majority of the Chinese company’s total sales in 2020. Supremind is targeting institutions, road operators, and government offices. On a contract-basis, Supremind expects that it will take only 1 month to recoup its investments. Supremind aims to at the very least, double the market’s total size while boosting sales to more than 100 million yuan in 2020.

In April, the company formed an alliance with NWS Holdings to combining their technological and industrial expertise. This will help Supremind get an edge in market resources. This will help the company more easily develop architecture management and smart highway systems.

First, Supremind’s founder, Peng Yao, will apply AI video analysis to smart transportation management. After that, he will direct the company’s focus toward smart city construction.