Robotics and artificial startup, Rokid, based in Hangzhou, China, has raised a Series B extension round.

The company develops smart devices such as smart speakers and a voice-assistant based in artificial intelligence which is comparable to products such as Alexa by Amazon and Siri by Apple.

The latest round of funding which was led by Temasek Holdings came out to $100 million, a source told TechCrunch. According to the company’s founder, due to its youth, Rokid chose to raise a Series B extension round rather than a Series C round.

Rokid was founded by Mingming Zhu in 2014. Zhu also serves as the company’s Chief Executive Officer.

At the Consumer Electronics Show 2018 held in Las Vegas, the Chinese startup unveiled two more developments, one being an open source platform.

The Rokid Full Stack Open Platform is meant to form connections to the US market and provides access to resources to third-party developers. The platform was developed in partnership with Alibaba Group.

The second product showcased by Rokid was their Rokid Glass, a pair of augmented glass meant for the consumer market. Companies such as Vuxiz, Sony, and Epson have also released competitor smart glasses. The company hopes the new products will establish Rokid in the US market.

The company has research centres on an international scale, with locations in both Beijing and San Francisco where the technology behind Rokid’s products in researched and developed. The company previously raised a Series B round in November 2016.

“I think we are the only product that is really consumer-centric in not only design and weight, but also energy use,” Director of Product Management, Reynold Wu said. “A lot of players design for the enterprise market first and then try consumer opportunities, but we have developed consumer products over the past three years. All of them have entered the market successfully and we have users because of that, so we have confidence in our consumer products.”

Other investors in the recent Series B investment round include Credit Suisse, IDG Capital, and CDIB Capital. The round leader, Temasek Holdings, owned by the Government of Singapore is an investment company with an emphasis on robotics and artificial intelligence.

The Rokid Pebble and the Rokid Alien, the two smart speakers developed by the startup have been released in Chinese markets and will enter US markets.

“AI products are born to be global, not just for local market,” Zhu said. “The only issue for Rokid is that we’re not ready for the US market because the most important thing is content and we are not ready if there is only local content or services.”

(Picture courtesy: https://www.rokid.com/)