Home-Grown Leader Expands Across Greater China
Fano Labs promotes Hong Kong’s competitive advantages
and accelerates local AI and big data development
“Financial and infrastructure support from the Hong Kong government and HKSTP helped us quickly gain a firm foothold in the market and is proving crucial to our continued expansion.”
Hong Kong’s Fano Labs specialises in speech recognition and natural language processing technologies, focusing on the multiple languages of the Asia Pacific region.
The lab was spun off from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) in 2015 and funded by the government-backed HKU Technology Start-up Support Scheme. It has since joined the HKSTP incubation programme and received support from InvestHK to expand to the Greater Bay Area (GBA) and beyond.
“Financial and infrastructure support from the Hong Kong government and HKSTP helped us quickly gain a firm foothold in the market and is proving crucial to our continued expansion,” Dr. Miles Wen, Co-founder & CEO of Fano Labs, says.
Fano Labs solutions are now widely used in financial services and applied by business-to-business companies. With its advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and big data technologies, Fano Labs enables organisations to analyse voice recordings in multiple languages and extract insights from the conversation. This helps enterprises with customer service, compliance, and other lines of business.
Promoting Hong Kong to the world
Innovation and technology talent is crucial to the continued growth of the AI and big data sector in Hong Kong. According to Wen, the city’s good image is key to attracting overseas talents.
"It is important to convince overseas companies and talent that Hong Kong is an ideal destination. Facing competition, we can do more to strengthen our advantages," he explains. Wen emphasises Hong Kong’s status as a rising market, which can provide more business opportunities than a saturated market. He believes the city is well-positioned to become a leading AI and big data hub in the region.
"Perhaps our biggest advantage in attracting businesses to set up in our city is our role as a gateway to the GBA and Greater China market for overseas companies moving into China and for Chinese companies expanding abroad. Beyond proximity and relationships, Hong Kong also has strong capital markets to support this overseas expansion,” Wen says.
AI and big data in Hong Kong
There is also a wealth of opportunities in Hong Kong itself.
“We have witnessed a significant up-take in AI adoption in recent years, in both the public and private sectors, and we are very confident in our future success,” Wen reveals, explaining that local organisations are willing to invest in these technologies to help them stay competitive.
"Still, there is room for improvement. We are confident that the government will keep on supporting, funding, and promoting the development in AI and big data, as well as attracting talents," he continues.
Wen also points out that the key to future development in AI and big data no longer lies in the technology itself, but the right blend of AI and human. He explains, "Even for a company like Fano Labs, human intervention is fundamental, especially regarding ethics and defending decisions."