Cinnamon has raised 15 Million USD for Series B equity and debt finance.
Cinnamon has raised 15 Million USD for Series B with Venture Capital Funds of SBI Investment and Venture Capital Fund of SPARX Group as the main investors and for debt finance by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.
■The details of the fundraising
Cinnamon has raised the total 15 Million USD for Series B equity finance including the first round made in May 2018 with the following investors listed below and for debt finance by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.
■The objective of acquiring the investment and the new Shareholders
To achieve the vision of ‘Extend human potential by eliminating repetitive tasks’, Cinnamon strengthens the below key areas;
・Hiring top level talents especially for highly skilled AI talents globally,
・Accelerating the growth by increasing the company reputation and expanding customer network behind building the strong investor structure,
・Strengthening the core technologies and user interfaces of the AI products,
・Building the strong organizations to provide cutting-edge AI technologies and quality customer services in Japan, Vietnam, and Taiwan,
・Driving global expansions to the US, and
・Investing R&D to create new AI products like Voice Recognition.
■New Investors
◯FinTech Business Innovation LPS（SBI Investment Co., Ltd., Minato-ku Tokyo, Representative Director and President: Katsuya Kawashima）
〇SBI Venture Investment Revitalization Tax System LPS（SBI Investment Co., Ltd., Minato-ku Tokyo, Representative Director and President: Katsuya Kawashima）
◯FFG Venture LPS 1（FFG Venture Business Partners Co., Ltd, Chuo-ku Fukuoka, President：Satoru Fukuda）
◯ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation（Chiyoda-ku Tokyo,President & CEO：Satoshi Kikuchi）
◯Sony Innovation Fund
◯TIS Inc. （Shinjuku-ku Tokyo, President : Toru Kuwano）
◯Mirai Creation Investment Limited Partnership Ⅱ (SPARX Group Co., Ltd., Minato-ku Tokyo, Representative Director and President, Shuhei Abe)
◯Corporate Venture Capital Fund (Nomura Incubation Investment Limited Partnership) of Nomura Holdings, Inc. (Chuo-ku Tokyo, Representative Executive Officer, President and Group CEO, Koji Nagai)
◯Sumitomo Corporation（Chiyoda-ku Tokyo, President and CEO, Masayuki Hyodo）
◯Next-Gen Corporation Supporting Ⅰ Investment Limited Partnership (SMBC Venture Capital Co., Ltd., Chuo-ku Tokyo, President, Tatsufumi Ishibashi)
◯Sachio Semmoto (RENOVA, Inc., Executive Chairman Representative Director)
◯Fujiyo Ishiguro (Netyear Group Corporation, Representative Director and CEO)
◯Other investor
■Investors’ comments
◯Nomura Holdings, Inc.
“Through the VOYAGER accelerator program sponsored by Nomura Holdings for which Cinnamon Inc. participated, we found Cinnamon attractive because the company is developing and rolling out a full lineup of AI products that help boost productivity. The fact that the company has put in place a system to attract and develop talented personnel in the field of AI at its development center in Vietnam leads us to believe that the company has an even brighter future. We hope that the company will develop high-precision AI products specializing in operational domains, which cannot be achieved by generic AI engines.”
◯Sumitomo Corporation
“Sumitomo Corporation is supporting startup companies in fast commercialization and growing their business by actively matching up these enterprises with our group companies’ own lineup of business assets, at the same time pushing ahead with the Sumitomo Corporation Group’s digital transformation (hereinafter, “DX”). This time, we appreciate Cinnamon’s organizational scheme to have high skilled AI engineers, which also lead to the technical superiority of their product. Together, we will further accelerate Sumitomo Corporation Group’s DX and strive for the creation of next-generation businesses.”
■Up-coming plans
Under the key business domain of ‘White-collar productivity improvement’, Cinnamon continues to enhance the core technologies of the AI platforms and build AI products to drive Business Process Re-engineering of large corporations. Cinnamon will also collaborate with many channel partners to provide our solutions to more customers. Cinnamon plans to expand overseas to serve global customers.
【Cinnamon Inc. Company Information】
Company Name：Cinnamon Inc.
URL：https://www.cinnamon.is/en
HQ：1-9-16 Higashi Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Incorporation：October 2016
CEO：Miku Hirano
■Business Overview: AI product business, AI consulting development
Cinnamon provides Flax Scanner, a cognitive document reader, and other AI engines for top large corporations in Japan. Since Flax Scanner’s launch in April 2017, Cinnamon has acquired over 200 Sales leads and provided top-level AI solutions in Japan.
On top Flax Scanner, Cinnamon provides Scuro Bot (Chat bot understanding Natural Language and Lapis Engine (Recommendation engine) for Customer Support, Interview Arrangement, Property Portal Website, and others.
■Product Overview: Flax Scanner, Cinnamon’s core product
Flax Scanner is an Auto-documentation tool which enables users to extract information from application forms, documents, and Email, and to create formatted documents.
Flax Scanner understands contexts and reformats the documents from unstructured business documents and email. This tool can apply to both hand-writing and text data.
【Features】
1) It can apply to any type of unstructured, business documents.
2) It has the high recognition accuracy for hand-written reading. Japanese hand-writing reading accuracy at 99.2% for research data and 95-98% for real business data.
3) It improves accuracy by using auto-correctors build with client databases.
4) It can be used in both on-premise- and cloud- based by following customers’ security policies.
■Main Shareholders of Cinnamon Inc.
