We are pleased to announce that VMS has completed its Series A+ investment in Xiaoice (“Xiaoice” or the “Company”), the Company’s post-investment valuation exceeded USD 2 billion. The proceeds will mainly be used for accelerating their AI Being Employee product’s R&D and adoption.

Xiaoice, formerly a part of Microsoft’s AI development team, was spun-off as a separate entity in 2020, aiming to enable the Xiaoice product line to accelerate in terms of local innovation and commercialization. The Xiaoice Avatar Framework is one of the most practical and complete AI Being basic framework worldwide, covering over 660 million online users, 1 billion third-party smart devices and 900 million viewers across China, Japan, Indonesia and other countries, as well as commercial customers all over the world. The AI Beings created and hosted by Xiaoice achieved over 60% penetration rate in smart vehicles segment, and also commercialization in vertical segments such as finance, tourism and culture, and textile.

Xiaoice recently announced an annual upgrade of its AI Being product line, with enhanced technologies including large-scale dialogue engine, 3D neural network rendering, natural speech and AIGC1 intelligent content generation. The Company plans to complete the upgrade of all 300,000 AI Being employees within the existing Xiaoice Avatar Framework within the next quarter, further strengthening the AI Being Employee product line’s leading position globally.