Zeroth is an accelerator program that is out to fix the lack of talent, and investment options, for artificial intelligence (AI) in Asia, and it has just..
Zeroth is an accelerator program that is out to fix the lack of talent, and investment options, for artificial intelligence (AI) in Asia, and it has just opened applications for its second program which takes place in Hong Kong in late July.
“There’s almost nothing that won’t be touched by AI,” high-profile investor — and former Google China head — Kaifu Lee said at our most recent China event. And yet, Asia’s biggest firms still lag their U. S. peers on AI.
Things are moving in the right direction but seemingly for a select few. Didi Chuxing recently set up a U. S.-based lab , but it appears some way behind Google and Uber. Even then, retaining talent is tough. The recent departure of Andrew Ng , who led Baidu’s research lab in the U. S., has highlighted the struggle that China’s (Asia’s) biggest firms have in hiring and retain top talent in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning.
Tak Lo , founding partner of Zeroth, left his role at early-stage venture firm Mind Fund to start the project in 2015, which is Asia’s first dedicated AI and machine learning accelerator program.
“It wasn’t that there wasn’t enough talent, there just aren’t many investors [in the Asia region] focused on artificial intelligence,” said Lo, whose past projects have included Tech City in London, the SPH Plug and Play program in Singapore and a stint in the U. S. armed forces.
The idea is to take 20 companies per batch, with Zeroth offering up to $120,000 in optional funding. That’s a slightly different approach to its inaugural batch, which took in 10 companies and offered each six percent equity in exchange for $20,000.
