Intel to Invest $100 Million in Voice, Gesture Technologies

June 5, 2013 Leave a comment

June 4, 2013, 7:05 a.m. ET

Intel to Invest $100 Million in Voice, Gesture Technologies

By EVA DOU

TAIPEI—Intel INTC +0.48% Capital, the global investment arm of chipmaker Intel Corp., is setting up a $100 million fund to invest in “perceptual” computing technologies like voice and gesture control, company executives said. The fund will invest over the next two to three years in firms making software and applications with functions like imaging, gesture and voice control, emotion sensing and biometrics, the company said.These technologies will be increasingly prevalent, allowing users to interact with computers with greater ease and in more ways, said Gregory Bryant, Intel vice-president for the Asia-Pacific region, in an interview Monday on the sidelines of Taiwanese computer trade show Computex.

“The idea of the $100 million fund is you go find companies that have those kinds of innovative breakthroughs and help get them to work,” Mr. Bryant said.

He declined to name specific companies that will benefit from the fund.

Intel is already partnering with Creative Technology Ltd. C76.SG +0.79% on a three-dimensional peripheral camera for PCs that will go on sale in the second half of the year and will be able to sense depth in near-range gestures. Intel also said it is working with hardware makers to bring devices with built-in 3D cameras to market by the second half of 2014.

Filed under TMT Trends

About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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