SHANGHAI, June 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The artificial intelligence industry in China has become one of the hottest and fastest growing sectors, with large public companies and startups alike competing for the burgeoning market, as well as venture capital and private equity. China is poised to become one of the world leaders, if not the leader, based on a combination of progress, ambition, and government as well as large conglomerate support. Chinese investments account for 48 percent global AI startup funding market and for current patents has surpassed the United States by a large margin.

China Internet Weekly, the analytical and editorial entity of China Academy of Sciences (state-backed national scientific think tank and academic governing body) and one of the leading technology publications, on an annual basis publishes a ranking of the top 100 companies in each technology subsector including big data, AI, healthcare technology, and financial technology. The criteria for selection and ranking on these lists include factors such as revenue growth rate, brand reputation, level of innovation, and judge panel scoring.

The 2018 Top 100 List have just been published for Artificial Intelligence – and large technology conglomerate and emerging AI technology companies have been ranked alike. Some interesting additions to top 20 include Face++, one of the fastest growing machine vision companies, and AI Nemo, which is Baidu's smart home AI branch and effectively the Amazon Alexa of China. Others in the top 50 include the usual large tech conglomerates including Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, and Huawei.

The most notable addition to the top 10 is the #1 ranked company on this year's list, APEX Technologies, a fast growing data technology company focused on AI and blockchain technology. APEX Technologies builds data and artificial intelligence solutions for mid to large size corporation to help with marketing, CRM, customer experience, and data-driven insight – simply put, using AI to increase revenue and the bottom line.

APEX Technologies boasts an enterprise customer list with some of the most prominent Fortune 500 companies, brands, as well as top internet companies, including the likes of Lenovo, Didi (China's Uber), Hilton, DBS, Mont Blanc, Volvo, MacLaren, and Wanda Group. APEX Technologies' AI technology mainly consists of predictive insights and natural language processing (NLP) using proprietary deep learning technology, and is able to deliver a level of customization for large customers. The management team mentioned that the top priority within their strategy is rapid enterprise adoption as a result flexible solutions. APEX Technologies boasts an addition of roughly 100 new large enterprise customers in the past year alone, and the company doesn't see that slowing down.

"Our solutions can cost anywhere from a couple hundred grand for your standardized SaaS solution to a couple million for a large enterprise deployment with 50 servers. But the key is you can always start cheap and quick, and the goal is you will see the value and take the cooperation to the next level. That would be the similar logic for our data, AI, or blockchain solutions. We got a lot to offer, and customers are delighted for the most part.", said APEX Technologies VP of Commercial Larry Fang.

"We're just getting started.", added APEX Technologies Founder & CEO Jimmy Hu.

SOURCE APEX Technologies