GDP Venture and PTB Venture Lead Investment for AI Startup Element Inc

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Startup, Element Inc, announces Series A funding of $12 million (about Rp171 billion) led by GDP Ventures and PTB Ventures. Also participating are some of Indonesia's top-tier corporates, such as BCA (through its investment company, Central Capital Ventura), BRI (through its investment unit), Telkom Indonesia (through MDI Ventures), and Maloekoe Ventures (partner of Ayala Corporation, the Philippines).

David Fields, PTB Ventures' Managing Partner and GDP Venture's CTO On Lee will join Element Inc's board of Directors. Pandu Sjahrir also continues his investment in this round.

Element Inc was founded by Adam Perold (Stanford's graduate in product design) and Yann LeCun (machine learning expert) in the US. LeCun is a professor in NYU and previously was Facebook's AI Research Director.

This startup develops and distributes mobile-based software platform creating a biometric identity. The company produces a thorough biometric solution that mostly used to build global vaccination platform. It allows initiate diagnose, gives identity source to the health services, and creates access for financial services.

"Our mission in Element is to provide an identity for billions of people in need. We want to build an efficient and inclusive public. Currently, the opportunity for digital transformation in Asia and Africa is very engaging. We are honored to be able to partner with these world-class companies," Adam Perold, Element Inc's CEO and Co-Founder, said in the release.

In Indonesia, Element Inc has built the operational team by recruiting Rizki Suluh Adi as the Head of Indonesia.

Martin Hartono, CEO of GDP Venture, said on this funding, "GDP is always open for global investment that can give a big impact on Indonesia's development, world's fourth-largest population. By investing in Element Inc, we spot a chance to advance Artificial Intelligence technology, particularly for digital identity safety to be implemented in various sector."

"After years of operation, we've observed the well-known companies using Artificial Intelligence in Asia, US, Canada, and Europe. The end-to-end AI produced by Element for mobile and cloud is very unique," On Lee, CTO of GDP Venture, added.

David Bangun, Telkom Indonesia's Director of Digital & Strategic Portfolio, said, "Currently, Telkom has 180 million customers and business unit that provides national-scale IT infrastructure includes cloud, security, and broadband solution. With Element, we notice a big opportunity for partnerships that can give numerous advantage to our customers on a big scale."

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian