Hardware manufacturer Qualcomm has announced the creation of AI Fund, an investment fund through which the company will provide $100 million for innovative artificial intelligence start-ups. Quinn Li, Qualcomm’s Global Director, was asked to share information at a presentation in San Francisco, California.
Qualcomm’s first major investment in this program was with AnyVision, a company that develops facial recognition and computer vision software. The company’s specific investments in these start-ups will not be disclosed, but the AI Fund will provide $1 million to $10 million in investments for these projects.
The hardware company’s goal is to invest in AI-based projects that offer promising solutions in the technological world, such as robots, business tools, autonomous cars, artificial neural network development platforms, automatic learning, among others.
It is clear that the investment focus will be on the automatic learning method, especially as Qualcomm is the manufacturer of the Snapdragon chip for smartphones and IoT devices. In this sense, Li said that the company has plans to cover various sectors of the technology industry, contributing solutions that will accelerate economic growth and help solve real problems today.
Founded in 2000, Qualcomm Ventures has grown into a variety of industries with a portfolio of at least 150 subsidiaries, including Xiaomi and Waze.
Finally, it was determined that Qualcomm’s new investment fund would provide resources to image processing company Clarifai, artificial intelligence platform SenseTime, and self-propelled company Cruise Automation.