This marks the third investment the company has received this year. Future Intelligence recently completed a Series A funding round worth over 100 million yuan, led by Ant Group Co., Ltd., with Qiming Venture Partners participating as an over-subscribed follow-on investor. Notably, this represents Future Intelligence's third funding round this year, following the completion of Pre-A and Pre-A+ rounds in January and April respectively.
The proceeds from this funding round will be primarily allocated toward three strategic directions: first, continuously enriching the AI office hardware product portfolio; second, accelerating the development and market promotion of the overseas independent brand "viaim"; and third, increasing investment in exploration and development of cutting-edge technologies such as AI Agent.
Undeniably, major technology companies have been intensively deploying AI earphones over the past year. Their strategic intent certainly extends far beyond merely supplementing their hardware portfolios – these giants are competing for the "first touchpoint" of user interaction with AI services in the voice-first era. However, in this seemingly nascent competition, Future Intelligence has leveraged its forward-looking positioning from three years ago to establish a significant first-mover advantage in this niche market segment.
As early as 2021, Future Intelligence keenly recognized the tremendous potential of combining AI with earphones, focusing on the high-frequency, essential vertical segment of office and business scenarios, and began deep cultivation of AI earphones in specific use cases. Starting from addressing the "recording" pain point through transcription services, the company gradually expanded to encompass the "information processing" layer including real-time translation, summary generation, and task extraction. It has since evolved to the current generation of products featuring AI voice assistance, automated title overviews, personalized summaries, mind map construction, voice activation, and deep inquiry capabilities at the "proactive creation and interaction" layer. Its product functionality has achieved step-by-step advancement while clearly outlining a technological evolution path from auxiliary tools toward personal intelligent office assistants.
"From the beginning of our entrepreneurship, we clearly defined our focus on office scenarios, creating AI assistants that are 'more useful the more vertical they are,'" said CEO Ma Xiao, reflecting on the entrepreneurial journey. "Earphones, as a natural 'auditory' gateway, are highly compatible with office scenarios and thus became our 'first choice.' However, our goal is not simply to overlay AI functions onto hardware, but to fundamentally reconstruct hardware itself based on AI scenario requirements, ensuring we provide truly practical and user-friendly value. We firmly believe that even with large language models as powerful infrastructure, ultimate value creation must still be implemented in applications within specific vertical domains."
This deep focus on vertical scenarios and product philosophy of solving real pain points through technological pragmatism has formed the cornerstone of Future Intelligence's core competitiveness. In market performance, Future Intelligence's pragmatic product philosophy and technical capabilities have directly translated into definitive profitability and measurable market share – in 2024, Future Intelligence, established only two years prior, achieved profitability and demonstrated strong market appeal during e-commerce promotional periods.
Taking this year's 618 shopping festival as an example, the newly released iFLYTEK AI Earphone Air2 in May saw sales surge 580% compared to its predecessor, while the iFLYTEK AI Earphone Pro3 successfully topped the sales charts for "in-ear Bluetooth earphones" on Douyin and Tmall platforms, and captured the sales championship for "AI Bluetooth earphones" on JD.com, maintaining a leading position in the AI earphone market segment.
Additionally, since 2024, Future Intelligence has begun its overseas expansion journey using Hong Kong and Singapore as pilot markets. In January this year, leveraging the CES (Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas) opportunity, the company launched its new brand "viaim," with the first phase focusing on developing North American and Asia-Pacific markets, marking the substantial phase of its globalization strategy. Subsequently, its pace has continued to accelerate: products launched in the Middle East in July, quickly gaining market recognition through innovative design and exceptional user experience; in September, using IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin) as a launching pad, the company announced plans to enter the European market in the second half of the year, further improving its global sales system and demonstrating clear strategic rhythm and firm overseas expansion determination.
From January to July this year, viaim brand AI earphones achieved 7.2 times growth in absolute sales volume in the North American market, while overall sales in the Asia-Pacific region grew 1.28 times compared to the pilot performance in the second half of last year, with explosive month-on-month growth of 673.1% achieved in July. Although the Middle East market was only entered in mid-July, first-month sales performance was also impressive.
CEO Ma Xiao once stated, "Once overseas markets open up, there's an opportunity for several times the growth compared to the domestic market." These sales figures fully demonstrate the adaptability and competitiveness of viaim products in global markets.
Beyond market expansion, Future Intelligence's greater ambition lies in continuous exploration of cutting-edge AI technologies. Ma Xiao revealed: "Our long-term vision is to build an 'Agentic AI office assistant.'" In fact, as early as May this year, Future Intelligence officially launched its core AI capability platform – the viaim Brain – alongside new earphone products. This is a personal business office AI agent dedicated to upgrading AI from passive response tools to office partners or intelligent assistants capable of proactive thinking and decision support.
With viaim Brain as the core, Future Intelligence will launch more forms of hardware products around office scenarios, not only earphones representing auditory capabilities but also extending to visual and other sensory dimensions of AI hardware. These hardware devices serve as perception terminals, collecting multi-dimensional office data to feed viaim Brain, enabling it to understand user work habits more deeply and gradually become an "Agentic AI office assistant" capable of autonomous thinking, proactive planning, and seamless execution of complex tasks. Upgrades and optimizations at the AI functionality level will also enhance the user experience of hardware terminals.
The "one brain, multiple terminals" planning outlines Future Intelligence's strategic blueprint for evolving from a single AI earphone product to an office ecosystem centered on AI Agent. According to Ma Xiao, this year is Future Intelligence's "product year," with plans to not only release a groundbreaking office product for high-frequency recording scenarios but also introduce more non-earphone products next year to further enrich its AI office hardware matrix.
From single breakthrough products to diverse matrices, from tool innovation to ecosystem construction, Future Intelligence's ambitions extend far beyond market conquest. "One brain, multiple terminals" represents not merely product expansion but a paradigmatic revolution in office efficiency – as AI evolves from auxiliary tools to autonomous "assistants," Future Intelligence is pioneering a new era of office work characterized by proactive service and seamless collaboration.
Qiming Venture Partners Partner Wang Shiyu stated: "We continue to invest in Future Intelligence based on the team's product development capabilities in deep vertical scenarios, proven commercialization efficiency, and forward-looking vision for building an AI office ecosystem. This dimensional thinking from intelligent hardware to office ecosystem demonstrates the team's profound grasp of technological trends and strategic foresight. We look forward to Future Intelligence continuously breaking through with innovation and growing into a globally leading intelligent office platform."