VTB Capital invests $5.5 mln into aiHit software company
MOSCOW. Oct 6 (Interfax) - VTB Capital's venture business has invested $5.5 million into the British software company aiHit Ltd, which is working in artificial intelligence, VTB Capital Asset Management said in a statement.
VTB Capital implemented this investment in partnership with Amadeus Capital Partner, as well as several of aiHit's current investors.
Amadeus Capital Partner is a European investor in hi-tech companies.
AiHit has developed fully automated systems for extracting, categorizing, structuring, analyzing and managing unstructured data from the internet.
Investment will be put towards marketing, business development and R&D. aiHit plans to open an engineering center in St. Petersburg as part of its development strategy.
The head of VTB Capital's venture business, Aidar Kaliyev, said at a briefing on the transaction's announcement that VTB Capital became a shareholder in AiHit with a significant stake. However, Kaliyev did not specify the size of the stake.
Kaliyev said that the average horizon for venture investments is three to five years but with aiHit the time before a return on investment might be shorter. "The time before an 'exit' might be shorter and VTB Capital's investment might ensure the company chooses an exit. It is possible to create many applications on the development platform. Therefore, it is possible that we won't have to sell the company. We could sell by 'getting out' of certain applications," Kaliyev said.
aiHit is currently developing applications for companies operating in the business-information sphere such as Capital IQ, Dun & Bradstreet, Bisnode, Equifax and Datamonitor.
