Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

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Source | this article is compiled and written by IPO early know (ID:ipozaozhidao). The views in this article are for reference only.

Editor | Uncle C

Typesetting | Uncle C

The financing heat of Chinese artificial intelligence enterprises is unabated, and AI unicorns will also land in the capital market one after another. However, investors are worried about whether the relevant core technical cooperation and support of American companies will be affected at present.

Obtaining Qualcomm investment and establishing strategic cooperation with Qualcomm have become the focus of investors' attention.

Specializing in computer vision and deep learning, Shangtang has launched intelligent vision technologies, including face recognition, image recognition, character recognition, image and video analysis, and is the preferred AI service partner for more than 400 blue-chip companies, including chip companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia, as well as Xiaomi and Huawei in the smart phone industry.

In October 2017, Shangtang Technology and Qualcomm announced a cooperation in the form of "algorithm + hardware" to integrate Shangtang machine learning model and algorithms into Qualcomm's chip products for mobile terminals and IoT devices. In the same year, Shangtang successively carried out the same model of strategic cooperation with MediaTek and Ruixin Micro.

According to CounterpointResearch, a research firm, 1/3 of smartphones shipped will have AI capabilities by 2020, with more than 500m units.

Only when the bottom chip, algorithm, terminal and other whole industry chains reach the cooperative condition, can we really build the AI business system. At present, most of the AI unicorns in China focus on the market of algorithm platforms or solutions in the vertical field of AI, that is, they are in the middle or upper reaches of the industrial chain, but if AI technology can be commercialized more reasonably, AI enterprises need to extend to the upper reaches of the industrial chain or have a stable upstream technical foundation.

Hardware can enable software algorithms to land, and the integration of software and hardware can make customers more time-saving and convenient to purchase and use products, and the combination of software and hardware solutions can also improve sales profit margins in a certain range. In addition, if you want to break the dependence on chip suppliers, you need to develop your own chips and control part of the market pricing power in your own hands.

However, most of the core technologies of AI chips are controlled by American manufacturers, and China's strength still lags far behind. Judging from the amount of financing in various areas of AI alone, the amount of financing of Chinese chip / processor companies is far less than that of the United States.

Qualcomm has an early layout in AI and has a global leading position in the mobile processor industry. Qualcomm's AI processors have been launched for three generations, including Snapdragon 820, Snapdragon 835 and Snapdragon 845, covering Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Yijia, Hammer, Black Shark, Samsung and other manufacturers. At the same time, Qualcomm also works with corporate partners at the technology level to support machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, Caffe, Caffe2 and so on. The cooperation between Shangtang and Qualcomm adopts a similar model, so Shangtang's technology landing depends on Qualcomm to a certain extent.

Under the trend of "hardware" of AI application, the chip R & D and investment of domestic AI enterprises are accelerated. Cambrian AI chips have been integrated into Huawei Hays Kirin 970; Yunzhisheng's smart chips have been used in drones, security surveillance, robotics, intelligent medical and other markets; another start-up Horizon has developed two visual AI chips in two years for smart business, smart driving, and smart city applications.

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