Artificial Intelligence startup WIZ.AI has announced that it has raised US$30 million in funding. The round was led by Tiger Global, GL Ventures and Gaorong Capital while other investors include Yunqi Partners, Singtel Innov8 and K3 Ventures.

Kum Tho Wan, Managing Director - Investments, Asia Pacific, Singtel Innov8 said, “We believe in investing in technology and people to deliver the best possible value and experiences for users, especially our customers. WIZ.AI has the strong capability to improve support and expertise in local conversational language using AI that really listens, understands and speaks like a local.”

The 2019-founded startup has developed the Talkbot, which can deliver over 100 million automated customer interactions, with speech pattern recognition, text-to-speech voice customisation, and self-learning extended dialogue management. 

The flagship AI is what caught the interest of the investors as it is programmed to converse in English, Malay, Mandarin, Thai, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Bahasa Indonesia and colloquial forms of English such as Singlish and Taglish (a form of Filipino English).

With the latest investment, the company plans to expand globally in South-east Asia and Latin America, building out its research and development as well as service teams in those markets.

“Our new growth strategy, supported by this latest round of investment, will enable us to further hone our competitive advantages in localising and hyper personalising diverse languages and accents, humanising machines to efficiently solve everyday issues for people,” said Jennifer Zhang, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of WIZ.AI.