Richard Humphreys |
Accenture has formed a strategic alliance with China-based AI startup Malong Technologies. Through the alliance, Accenture’s Applied Intelligence practice and Malong will develop joint industry solutions and go-to-market activities.
These new solutions will take advantage of Malong’s product recognition and auto-tagging technology, ProductAI. This lets machines ‘see’ physical objects the way a person does. Retailers can use it to make product checkouts much more efficient and allow their customers to shop for items by taking a picture of it with their smartphones. Other use cases include defect detection in manufacturing to drive quality, baggage scanning for improved safety and analysing medical images to help doctors make critical decisions faster.
The agreement, in which Malong designates Accenture as its preferred systems integrator and consulting partner, will see the development of services and solutions for organisations in any industry where objects need to be reliably recognised at a high-level, microscopic-level, or x-ray level.
Paul Daugherty, chief technology and innovation officer at Accenture, said: “AI has been making incredible strides in advancing computer vision, as is clearly demonstrated in what Malong Technologies is now able to offer to organisations. Our alliance and investment in them ensures that Accenture and our Applied Intelligence practice will stay ahead of the curve when it comes to offering clients innovation through AI and intelligent technologies, across industries and countries.”
Dinglong Huang, CEO of Malong Technologies, added: “Our award-winning scientific research in deep learning and computer vision has allowed us to develop an accurate, affordable, and secure cloud-based cognitive service that can deliver significant impact across many business use cases. Gaining Accenture as an investor and alliance partner will allow us to jointly bring our services to top-tier companies worldwide.”
Malong Technologies has made a number of breakthroughs since its inception in 2014, attracting the attention of key industry players, including Microsoft. In January 2015, Malong Technologies, was selected from nearly 1,000 entrepreneurial teams, over several rounds of judging, into the 6th class of the Microsoft Accelerator in Beijing. Malong also won the first prize in the Microsoft Azure 2016 Hackathon in Beijing.