Led · Series A · Apr 2020

Lingumi offers AI-driven English language lessons targeted at toddlers and pre-schoolers, with its first course designed for two-year-olds. Lessons are built around social learning and include interactive speaking tasks, teacher videos and games. The company reports children learn vocabulary up to six times faster on its platform and that it is 95% cheaper than live courses. Lingumi is used by more than 100,000 families globally, with 40% of active users playing lessons daily and over 1.5 million English lessons delivered in China in the past six months. Founder and CEO Toby Mather and the team emphasize personalized curricula empowered by AI and an asynchronous teaching model. The company plans to expand its technology and marketing teams in London, Cardiff, Singapore and Shenzhen using the new funding. Lingumi offers a digital-first language-learning platform for pre-school children, delivering a single daily lesson of around 20 minutes through an app and upselling simple physical products like Play Cubes and Jumbo Word Cards. The product is built around a curriculum focused on natural spoken English and designed for co-learning with parents or caregivers, with the app deliberately limiting screen time. The company pivoted from a connected-toy concept to a pure digital subscription model in mid-2018 after families requested more curriculum, and now sells the physical items separately. Lingumi leverages child-level data to personalize learning trajectories and emphasizes accessibility for middle- and working-class families. The startup reports about 10,000 users across more than 40 countries, with primary focus in Western Europe, Taiwan and growing activity in China, including pilots for kindergarten deployments. Founded by CEO Toby Mather and CTO Adit Trivedi after pairing at Entrepreneur First in late 2015, the company is based in London and Cardiff and plans to use new funding to expand its digital and physical product ecosystem and enter new markets. Lingumi is an education-technology startup that builds games and a connected toy, Lingumi Play, to teach foreign languages to toddlers. Lingumi Play pairs foam cubes with an iOS/Android app using augmented reality to introduce language concepts without requiring screen interaction. The company has developed the Lingumi Method, a curriculum for children aged two and up, and supports six languages including Mandarin and Spanish with a primary focus on English. The method was developed alongside academics worldwide, including William O'Grady, and the company plans to expand the curriculum and train teachers to use the method alongside digital resources. Lingumi launched foam toys across Europe earlier in the year with a particular focus on Germany after beginning with paper prototypes. The founders are Toby Mather (an Oxford graduate) and CTO Adit Trivedi, and the company is a member of Entrepreneur First's 5th cohort. The startup cites market data that worldwide English-language-learning spending tops $150 billion and grows ~25% annually.

Led · Series A · Mar 2020

Cloudwise Technology is a Beijing-based company that specialises in artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps). The firm focuses on AIOps solutions for IT operations. It announced it received a $150 million Series E funding round. The round was led by its long-term investor Sequoia Capital China. The article does not provide details on other investors, valuation, use of proceeds, past rounds, or operating metrics. Cloudwise secured a $60 million Series D3 round, according to the DealStreetAsia China Digest. The funding was led by CITIC Private Equity Funds Management. The article does not provide details on the company’s product, operations, revenue, or user metrics. It also does not disclose other participating investors or the intended use of proceeds. No founding year or specific company location beyond inclusion in the China Digest was provided in the report. Yunzhihui develops intelligent business operations (AIOps) platforms that apply AI, machine learning and big data to IT operations. Its platform emphasizes anomaly detection, event correlation and root-cause analysis to strengthen IT monitoring, service management and automation. The company has worked with customers across finance, energy, smart manufacturing, transportation, banking, insurance and real estate, achieving notable industry adoption. Yunzhihui has earned ITSS AIOps conformity certification, been repeatedly included as a sample supplier in Gartner's AIOps market research, and set up an Intelligent Operations Research Center with Tsinghua University's Software School. Its revenue has grown more than 100% for three consecutive years. The company plans to use new funding to further strengthen in-house R&D and project delivery,完善 its intelligent operations product matrix and expand its marketing and service network. Cloudwise is described as a leading applications performance management (APM) solutions provider based in Beijing. The company's core offering is applications performance management solutions. Chinese private equity firm CBC Capital, which focuses on media and communications businesses, led a $26 million Series C investment in Cloudwise. The round was reported by China Money Network. The report did not include revenue, user metrics, or detailed financing breakdowns.