Mumbai, November 25:

Tata Communications is making early inroads into the artificial intelligence space by co-investing in San Francisco-based Sentient Technologies.

Sentient said that it has raised $103.5 million in Series C funding from Access Industries, Tata Communications (Hong Kong), Horizons Ventures, and a group of private investors.

The start-up will use the funds to expand its range of products and services around artificial intelligence, which refers to theintelligence exhibited by machines or software. Sentient specialises in distributed computing technology that helps companies use software to manage complex tasks such as financial trading.

Tri Pham, Chief Strategy Officer of the Tata group company, said Sentient offers a next-generation infrastructure-as-a-service platform by using scalable distributed computing technology.

This is a strategic investment that will bring both commercial and collaboration opportunities for both companies. We see Sentient at the forefront of cutting-edge technologies, bringing a disruptive approach to cloud based computing services It is a good fit with Tata Communications long-term strategy around anything as a service and managed services. Tri Pham told BusinessLine.

However, he did not give a break-up of the actual spend by Tata Communications.

Tata Communications will also become a preferred provider to Sentient for services such as data centre space, managed hosting and network services.

(This article was published on November 25, 2014)

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Tata Comm invests in artificial intelligence start-up