PatSnap has secured $300 million in Series E funding that was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Tencent Investment with participation from existing investors CITIC Industrial Fund, Sequoia China, Shun Wei Capital, and Vertex Ventures.
PatSnap plans to use the funds to further advance its innovation intelligence platform, accelerate product development, and acquire additional domain expertise in the industry sectors where its technology is used by research and development (R&D) and intellectual property (IP) teams.
The funds will also enable PatSnap to expand its sales presence around the world and invest in the growth and professional development of its employees to ensure the company is well positioned to address the complex needs of its customers.
PatSnap’s flagship R&D Intelligence and IP Intelligence platforms use machine learning (ML), computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), and other artificial intelligence (AI) technology to provide innovation teams at many of the world’s largest companies, global brands, and universities and research institutions.
PatSnap’s clients include Dyson, Spotify, Oxford University Innovation, and The Dow Chemical Company.
“Adding Softbank Vision Fund 2 and Tencent to our notable roster of investors will help solidify PatSnap as the industry standard for innovation intelligence,” said Jeffrey Tiong, founder and CEO of PatSnap. “Both have deep investment expertise with AI-led companies and proven track records supporting sustainable company growth.”
PatSnap has more than 10,000 customers around the world, supported by more than 700 employees working from the company’s Asian headquarters in Singapore, European headquarters in London, and North American headquarters in Toronto.
Over the past year, PatSnap has enabled its customers to significantly accelerate time to insight when dealing with unstructured data by an estimated 12 times, leading to an estimated three times increase in successful product launches.
“We believe AI is radically changing industries, and PatSnap is a technology leader using AI to enable companies to innovate faster using IP data and R&D analytics,” said Eric Chen, managing partner of SoftBank Investment Advisers.
Levin Yao, managing partner of Tencent Investment, said PatSnap’s portfolio of customer use cases reinforces its role in enabling companies to significantly improve their ability to identify business opportunities and threats across multiple domains and industries.
