Hong Kong – (Thursday), 11 October 2018: CLSA Limited (“CLSA”), Asia’s leading capital markets and investment group, is pleased to announce the launch of AlphaLabs, a new business established to invest in and develop early-stage, technology-focused start-ups which are advancing or disrupting financial services.
CLSA has tracked the Asia technology story closely for more than three decades and has built a broad and deep connection to this sector. AlphaLabs will leverage CLSA’s innovative and technology-driven financial services business to invest and engage early winners in the Asia fintech space so to maximise their potential.
AlphaLabs focuses on transformative ideas and technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, big data, blockchain, cyber security, digital assets and reg tech which are increasingly dislocating all aspects of the financial services industry.
CLSA CEO Jonathan Slone said: “The financial services industry is going through an unprecedented period of technological change with emerging technologies both improving and disrupting established business models. This opportunity enhances CLSA’s strategy to deploy capital in a sector that is not only our native business but also one that is ripe with opportunities and in the region that CLSA knows inside out.”
AlphaLabs Founder & CTO, Max Nam-Storm said: “Technology has been at the centre of Asia’s growth and with the recent financial services emancipation in markets like China, there is a wealth of demand for regionally adapted technical solutions for Asia financial services. We have established AlphaLabs to take advantage of one of the fastest growing and most transformative sectors in Asia by seeking, seeding and scaling early-stage, Asia-focused, financial technology companies.”
In October 2018, AlphaLabs completed its second investment, providing funding to Epistema, an Israeli company that develops AI tools for knowledge collection and analytics in the enterprise with the aim to empower financial firms to make quicker and better informed decisions. Other investors in this funding round include MizMaa Ventures Ltd., Mithril Capital Management LLC, Slack Technologies Inc., Pico Venture Partners and Flint Capital. This investment follows an initial investment made in April 2018 into Symphony Communications Services, a cloud-based communication and content sharing platform.
Nam-Storm commented further: “AlphaLabs is actively pursuing fintech investment opportunities and in Epistema we have found a highly credible team focused on an emerging field of AI-assisted knowledge management. We are especially excited about the prospects of applying this to the field of financial research and investment decision processes.”
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About AlphaLabs
AlphaLabs is part of CLSA, Asia’s leading capital markets and investment group. Established to identify, seed and scale early-stage, Asia-focused, financial technology companies, AlphaLabs has direct access to CLSA’s long-established, innovative, technology-driven financial services business, enabling it to evaluate and grow potential investments in a real-time enterprise environment. https://alphalabs.ventures