According to the China Information and Communication Research Institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the global investment in artificial intelligence in the first half of 218 reached US$ 43.5 billion, of which China's investment reached US$ 31.7 billion, accounting for more than 7%. As of September 218, the number of artificial intelligence enterprises in the world was 5,159, including 1,122 in Chinese mainland, and 445 in Beijing.

The hot situation of artificial intelligence in China can be seen.

the crazy influx of capital into the artificial intelligence industry has also spawned a lot of bubbles. Some investors pointed out: "Recently, I met an underwear maker who also said that he was an artificial intelligence company. This is a very abnormal phenomenon. Now, the bubble in the field of artificial intelligence is particularly serious. "

how is the development of artificial intelligence industry in China? What are the manifestations of the artificial intelligence bubble? What impact does the capital winter have on the artificial intelligence industry? Recently, we interviewed Zhou Quan, a partner of Innolux Angel Fund, and talked about his views on these issues.

Zhou Quan mainly focuses on artificial intelligence, big data, and intelligent hardware pan-science and technology in Innolux Angel Fund, and has invested in projects such as conjectural technology, micro-motion world, intelligent walkers, and future black technology.

Wen | Dani

1

There is bound to be a "bubble"

When capital begins to pay attention to an industry, it will certainly give birth to a bubble.

in the past year or two, artificial intelligence projects have been sought after by capital. We have observed that it is very easy for scientists in scientific research institutes to start businesses and get financing. For example, CAMBRIAN in the Department of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenjian Technology co-founded by Wang Yu, an associate professor hired by the Department of Electronic Engineering in Tsinghua, etc.

In 218, Horizon Series B raised US$ 1 billion. With so many investment institutions investing, there must be their investment logic.

Yu Kai, founder of Horizon and former executive dean of Baidu Research Institute, has high IQ and research ability. At the same time, he can bring together the top talents in the industry, and the valuation of Horizon is directly proportional to the number of scientists in the company. Although Horizon has no product sales revenue at present, it has accumulated enough talents, and the premium given by the capital market will be several times higher.

The scarcity of head projects also brings a certain premium to the horizon. Capital is willing to give horizon such a high valuation, which must be because its future market space is large enough. If a great chip company can appear in China in the future, the probability of success of the current head chip company is greater.

making an investment does not mean that if the value of the project is one dollar now, just give it one dollar. Capital gives it a hundred dollars, betting on the possibility that it can become 1 thousand dollars in the future.

in my opinion, the pursuit of capital is also beneficial to the development of the industry. After the Internet bubble burst in 2, a large number of companies closed down, but they made China Baidu and Alibaba. Whether it is an artificial intelligence bubble or a technology bubble, the winner is king. After the baptism of capital winter, some great artificial intelligence companies will be precipitated in China in two or three years, which is beneficial for our country to shift from real estate resource-based economic growth to technological innovation.

2

In 219, the artificial intelligence bubble will burst

In recent two years, artificial intelligence projects have received the most financing and the highest valuation. Many VC projects are IPO prices, and even some artificial intelligence angel wheel projects are Pre-IPO prices, which is extremely unreasonable.

this year, the whole industry has entered a capital winter. In my opinion, the artificial intelligence bubble will also burst in 219, and some artificial intelligence companies with no hematopoietic capacity, no landing scene and no income will bear the brunt.

As the crown and vanguard in the field of artificial intelligence, unmanned driving has also heard the news of layoffs, contraction and discord among company teams. Because unmanned driving is very difficult, it takes a long time to land. This process has no income and depends on capital investment. Now investors are cautious, and driverless driving must bear the brunt. In 219, the arms race in the field of driverless driving will be unprecedented.

now, when a project goes to finance, the usual practice is to cut the valuation by half. (This valuation is relative. The valuation of good projects is very firm, and the valuation of bad projects is no longer low. ) Now, the overall project valuation tends to be reasonable. The valuation of excellent and head projects will not be too cheap, but it is no longer the same as before, one price in the morning and one price in the afternoon, and there is no chance if you don't vote at night. Now, entrepreneurs are more rational, and they also want to find some investors with resources and brand endorsements.

3

Anxious investor

Whenever the wind blows in, investors are also anxious, fearing to miss the opportunity. Therefore, there are also some investors on the market who don't understand artificial intelligence technology and rely entirely on their feelings.

If the investor knows the operating income and profit of a project and can invest against the valuation of listed companies, then the primary school students can also invest. Investors can only succeed easily if they invest in industries that they understand and know. If it's just chasing the wind, it will definitely be a chicken feather in the end. Just like the blockchain that caught fire in 218, this phenomenon is obvious.

Innolux mainly focuses on three points when investing in science and technology projects:

First, heaven. Scientific and technological innovation is different from model innovation, and there is a certain threshold for starting a business. Scientific and technological innovation needs 1 thousand hours of accumulation, and scientists have accumulated scientific research, technology and team in the past five or ten years;

second, go into the ground. Scientists can't succeed if they only have good technology, but they don't have the ability to land and can't find practical application scenarios. Therefore, we hope that in addition to great scientists, professors and experts, there are also young people rushing to the front line to do marketing BD and recruit people, so that such a team is more likely to succeed;

third, you can go to sea. Now science and technology competition is a global competition, and it is hoped that the entrepreneurial team will have an international vision.

If scientists want to turn into entrepreneurs, they need to cross a gap: from technology to products, products to markets, they need to face many challenges. Yingnuo will connect entrepreneurs with their lack of industrial resources, government resources and VC resources, and accelerate the development of the project through in-depth post-investment services.

There are many sub-sectors in artificial intelligence and big science and technology industries. If investors don't conduct in-depth research in the sub-sectors, it is difficult to make professional judgments on the projects.

in 215, we invested in black technology when there was only one idea and one PPT in the future. Now it has completed three rounds of financing, and its valuation has doubled several times. To make early investment, most projects are in the initial stage, just like the future situation of black technology. This requires investors to judge whether the market of the products and technologies of the project has imagination or not, and whether it can develop into a company with a valuation of billions after three to five years.

A company that made low-orbit satellites found us when the valuation was very low. At that time, we didn't have enough knowledge and research on this industry, and finally we missed it. This reminds us to make early investments, be curious about new things, always be humble and tolerant, and constantly improve our cognition. If you reject a project rashly because you don't understand, you will miss many opportunities.

4

The era of technological innovation

In the past few years, most of the start-up companies in China have been innovative. With the large population base in China and the bonus of mobile Internet, enterprises such as e-commerce and * * * enjoy the economy have developed very fast in the past few years. However, the Sino-US trade war in 218 made us soberly realize that China lacked its own core technology, and many "buildings" were built on other people's foundations.

From the general trend, China really needs scientific and technological innovation:

On the one hand, the cost of foreign companies in China is increasing by 1% every year, and it has become a trend to flee China and move to Southeast Asia. There is no cost advantage in making shoes and shirts in China. We need some innovative companies with core technologies, such as robot companies, artificial intelligence companies, chip companies and intelligent manufacturing companies, to fill the industrial gap.

In addition, China has trained 6 million university graduates and 4.5 million graduate students in the past 1 years, and the proportion of overseas students returning to China is also increasing. China has gradually changed from the demographic dividend in the past to the engineer dividend (demographic dividend with high education quality). Having enough engineers has provided a good foundation for China to shift from traditional real estate to scientific and technological innovation.

in the field of artificial intelligence, the gap between China and the United States is mainly in basic technology research and high-end technical talents. For example, in the chip semiconductor industry, which needs long-term technology research and development and capital accumulation, China lags behind the United States in algorithm. However, China's population base and market are large enough to obtain a large amount of data. Therefore, China is ahead of the United States in application.

For example, the "Imagination Technology" invested by Inno uses deep learning technology to assist doctors to analyze medical image data such as DR, CT and MRI. When this company found us, we decided to invest that day.

at the time of voting, I decided that this company would surpass similar foreign companies in the future and even become a global company. The founder of Imagination Technology is a Ph.D. graduate from the University of Chicago. The team is not worse than similar projects in the United States in algorithm technology. Their advantage is that the medical image data obtained far exceeds that in the United States. In terms of the amount of medical treatment, the data of a third-class hospital in China is larger than that of American competitors in a month; In terms of the protection of private data, in the United States, it is very complicated for enterprises to obtain the image data of a patient, which requires the patient's autograph. In this respect, China startups have great advantages.

One of the reasons for the Sino-US trade war is that the United States sees China's ambition and grand plan in the field of artificial intelligence and intelligent manufacturing, which is the commanding height of American industry. If China wants to do it, the United States will definitely suppress it in an all-round way. Artificial intelligence and intelligent manufacturing are the future trends, and China will not give up catching up.

the next decade will be an era of technological innovation.

5

Strive to survive and live longer

This year, I hope to dig deep into the two directions of intelligent networked cars and intelligent manufacturing:

Cars are a trillion-dollar market. Compared with mobile phones and computers, cars have not changed much since their invention. Now the automobile industry has ushered in a turning point of change, and the future automobile will be an intelligent means of transportation. For example, talking now is not the main function of a mobile phone, and driving in the future may not be the biggest function of a car, but it will become an intelligent terminal and a detection terminal.

In the past 1 years, Apple has led to the outbreak of the smart phone industry chain, resulting in the white horse shares of Shenzhen O-film Tech Co.,lt and Shunyu Optoelectronics, whose market value has increased tenfold. In the era of smart cars, with the establishment of Tesla in China, investment opportunities in the industrial chain of intelligent networked vehicles have also emerged, such as unmanned vehicles, key core components, V2V, V2X, and information security of networked vehicles.

In terms of intelligent manufacturing, Japanese factories were very advanced and automated 2 years ago, and most of the production capacity in China's textile industry, clothing industry and some heavy industries was backward.

a year ago, I visited many 3C manufacturing enterprises, and the defect detection still needed manual detection by female workers. I stared at the magnifying glass for one day, but my original good eyes finally failed. If we use machine vision, we can not only liberate people from tedious and boring work, but also greatly improve the accuracy. Many domestic chip manufacturing industries even need to manually carry chip boats. I remember very clearly that an operator fell while carrying chips, lost hundreds of thousands at once and was finally fired, which has been fully automated in Japan for a long time. When we eliminate unreasonable industries and excess capacity, some new forces will certainly emerge.

in the past 4 years, China has enjoyed rapid development because of the dividend of reform and opening up. In the past 2 years, China's housing prices have never fallen, constantly challenging everyone's imagination. In the next three years, from the internal and external perspectives, China's economy will be in a period of adjustment, with economic slowdown and capital winter as the normal state. Because China has a huge population base and engineers' bonus, it may be another high-speed development period in three or five years.

But in the winner-takes-all environment in 219, entrepreneurs should be more pragmatic, strive for progress steadily, manage their cash flow well, do more certain things and not blindly expand. With abundant capital, enterprises can do aggressive things. Now the business operation should be more stable and strive to survive and live longer.

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