Belgium venture capitalist FLV Fund is paying $8m for a 49% stake in four Singapore-based companies which are developing intelligent agents that will automatically handle tasks for computer users. With Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV a major force in the establishment of the FLV fund, speech enabling the agents so they can access information from a variety of languages and translate it into a user’s own language is to be a priority.
The FLV fund will take a 49% stake in each of four linked companies. The basic technology was developed by I-Merge which has developed the ‘meta agent’, a super agent that can connect with all other agents. The three other agents are focused on vertical markets. I-Mail works in the e-mail environment and is designed to handle all types of messaging with the ability to convert from one format to another. I-News reads through internet content and indexes and summarizes relevant information while I-Office was set up to offer secretarial services such as email management and the organization of meetings and business trips.
