Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Sigh! AIGC is in the ascendant, but the former leading unicorn in the domestic AIGC field is standing on the edge of the rocky cliff.

Film Spectrum Technology, the original AIGC star company, has been exposed to the dilemma of poor management and shutdown.

The AI imaging company, which was founded in 2009, has been focusing on the large entertainment industry, and set a record for a single round of financing for AI image production with 1.36 billion yuan when D-round raised money.

With the blessing of heavy financing, the film spectrum was valued at more than 10 billion yuan in 2020, ranking 32th in the Hurun Global Unicorn list.

In the industry, film scores are popular with a South Korean TV series:

In 2016, the film spectrum was successfully implanted into domestic beverage advertisements in the hit South Korean drama Descendants of the Sun without a trace.

After that, the audience was familiar with the work of inserting advertisements in films, dramas, and comprehensive schools, such as the Legend of Chu Qiao, Happy Camp, Chinese Restaurant, I am a singer, and Sister who braved the Wind and waves, and so on.

Not only that, JD.com, Mengniu, Sanyuan, Mercedes-Benz, etc., were all customers of Shadow Spectrum.

What on earth is the unicorn facing now, which was the same in the past?

The core employee revealed that the operational crisis qubit learned from the core staff of Shadow Spectrum Technology that the film spectrum has cut off the company's employees' social security and provident fund contributions, not only that, the company has also repeatedly delayed the payment of wages for many employees.

In the face of this situation, many employees of the company have resigned and left, especially the financial and HR posts, and the departmental offices have almost been empty.

At this troubled time, the film spectrum staff also reported that the company's unified mailbox has been unable to log in.

It has caused panic at home and nearly collapsed in foreign business.

According to the news from the market, Shadow reached a strategic partnership with Mango TV since 2016, and the related business has been taken over by other companies recently.

In response to the above news, qubit asked the Shadow Spectrum Company for official confirmation, and there was no response as of the press release.

Searching for relevant news about the company so far this year, the latest industrial and commercial information took place at the end of May, and business investigations showed that Xu Bing, co-founder of Shangtang, had withdrawn from the company's "directors, managers and supervisors".

According to public data, Shadow Spectrum Technology was founded in 2009.

The core business is to automatically generate images based on AI, which mainly focuses on the research and development of image technology and computer graphics in the entertainment industry.

Generally speaking, the most well-known business in film music is the kind of advertising that is "secretly" implanted into movies and TV dramas and variety shows without being discovered by sharp-eyed audiences through generative AI technology.

In the fourth year of its establishment, the film spectrum completed the angel round financing.

Angel Wheel investors said that in the three and a half years from the agreement signed before the Spring Festival in 2013 to 2016, "in terms of valuation, we have gained nearly 300 times appreciation".

In the following five years, the financing round of Shadow Spectrum Technology came to the D + round, and when D-round set a record for a single round of financing for AI image production with the amount of 1.36 billion yuan, this round was led by Shang Tang, and other investors included CICC, Softbank Corp., GE Weidong, and so on.

In the following years, five strategic financing projects entered the market one after another, almost each with an amount of hundreds of millions of yuan.

The last time the financing was made public was in 2021.

According to public information, until 2020, Shadow Spectrum, the unicorn, was still triumphant.

This year, the 2020 Hurun Global Unicorn list was released, selecting a total of 586 unlisted companies worth more than 1 billion US dollars, including 21 unicorns in the AI industry.

The film spectrum ranks 32th in the world with a valuation of more than 10 billion yuan. It was also the only company on the list that focused on AI image generation technology.

But in the fall of 2021, the company's actions were not plain sailing.

First, apply for delisting of the new third board, and then terminate Science and Technology Innovation Board's listing counseling, because "consider the development strategy and capital operation path."

Even so, when ChatGPT suddenly appeared at the end of last year and generative AI reached the top of the trend, the shadow spectrum technology, which had been deeply cultivated in generative AI for many years, still attracted countless attention, and its name was mentioned many times in the inventory.

Chasing after the first year, but may fall in the first year of the big model let the film spectrum vertical and horizontal AI film and television field, is its company's product called "implant easy".

This product can use all available space to find advertising opportunities in the picture space of long and short videos, and then use generative AI technology to combine posters, logo projections, etc., with pictures according to the needs of advertisers, so that advertisements appear to exist in the video shooting stage.

The core technology of this product is the "cloud window real-time implantation" of shadow spectrum, through cloud computing, online rendering, and then generating virtual floating windows-from this point of view, shadow spectrum is undoubtedly the first generation of domestic AIGC company.

When Descendants of the Sun was broadcast on the iqiyi platform, Shadow became famous with this technology, and then quickly reached a strategic partnership with Mango TV to undertake the implantation of many Mango TV films and TV dramas over the past six or seven years.

At this stage, the core product of Shadow Spectrum was renamed "Yi Zhi", which was once called "the standard product of mango TV" by the staff of Mango TV Advertising and Marketing Center, and was "very popular with customers".

Because of its long-term cooperation with many entertainment companies, Shadow Spectrum is also considered to be one of the most successful representatives of the commercialization of AI technology in China.

But it is clear that the ambition of Shadow Spectrum does not stop at this business.

Qubit collation of public data found that although the concept of "generative AI" runs through the establishment and development of shadow spectrum, every year, shadow spectrum tells new stories.

2016

In early 2016, it partnered with Mango TV to launch the product "easy planting".

2018, the first year of VR / AR

In 2018, the film spectrum will focus on the VR, AR industry.

In 2018, known as the first year of AR / VR, Shadow signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Shangtang Technology to cooperate in underlying AI technologies such as VR and video analysis.

Later, the film spectrum also joined the China VR core technology industry alliance.

But the story of film spectrum in the field of VR and AR is not as popular as the ad placement business.

2019, AGC

As a result, in 2019, Shadow Music focused the track on the Automatic Generated Content mode.

Automatic Generated Content, that is, AGC after PGC and UGC.

What Shadow Spectrum does on this track is to release the machine automated production video content engine MAPE, hoping to use AI technology to bring about changes in video production technology.

In 2021, the first year of the meta-universe

By 2021, the meta-universe will be very hot, and the shadow spectrum will not fall behind in the pursuit of the tide.

The company positioned itself as a participant in the "automated generation of multimodal content meta-universe" and was among the "earliest in China".

Indeed, at the beginning of 2022, Shadow Spectrum appeared on the TOP list of meta-cosmic related enterprises selected by some organizations.

At WAIC2022 in the middle of the year, the Shadow Spectrum booth was displayed almost entirely around the "meta-universe" elements, and an ADT Meta version of the engine was released at the conference, which was used to "build the technical core of the production of meta-universe intelligent visual content."

And the enthusiasm of the shadow spectrum for the meta universe has not been concealed by the popularity of the big model.

2022, the first year of AIGC

However, with the huge waves of AIGC set off by Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, the meta-universe story of shadow spectrum also began to emphasize the element of AIGC.

The Shadow Space released by Shadow Spectrum is a meta-universe activity platform which relies on AIGC technology and has the technological capabilities of XR and digital twinning. The platform also supported the holding of the Shanghai artificial Intelligence Conference this year.

Taken together, Shadow Spectrum Technology has not let itself miss any of the hot AI concepts in recent years, including VR / AR and Metasmology.

But it, accompanied by the concept of "generative AI", was completely dumbfounded on the most popular AIGC track in 2023.

Not only did it not show its skills as expected by the outside world, but it was exposed that it was in business difficulties and arrears of wages.

It is a pity that such a former AIGC unicorn chasing after the first year may fall in the first year of the big model of AIGC.

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