The hot situation of artificial intelligence in China can be seen.
The madness of capital poured into the artificial intelligence industry, and at the same time gave birth to a large number of bubbles. Some investors pointed out: "I met an underwear manufacturer recently, and he also said that he is 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 is the impact of capital winter on the artificial intelligence industry? Recently, we interviewed Zhou Quan, a partner of Innolux Angel Fund, to talk about his views on these issues.
Zhou Quan focused on artificial intelligence, big data and intelligent hardware pan-technology in Innolux Angel Fund, and invested in projects such as conjecture technology, micro-motion world, intelligent walkers and future black technology.
Wen | Dany
0 1
A "bubble" must exist.
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 obtain financing. For example, CAMBRIAN Department of China Academy of Sciences, Wang Yu, co-founder of Shen Jian Science and Technology, and associate professor hired by Tsinghua Electronic Engineering Department.
Horizon B round financing 20 18 billion US dollars. So many investment institutions must have their investment logic to invest.
Yu Kai, founder of Horizon and former executive dean of Baidu Research Institute, has high IQ and strong research ability. At the same time, he can gather 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 has also brought a certain premium to the horizon. Capital is willing to give Horizon such a high valuation because its future market space is large enough. If a great chip company can appear in China in the future, the current head chip company has a greater probability of success.
Investment doesn't mean that the project value is one dollar now, just give it one dollar. Capital gives it one hundred dollars, betting on the possibility that it can become ten thousand dollars in the future.
In my opinion, the pursuit of capital is also conducive to the development of the industry. After the Internet bubble burst in 2000, a large number of companies closed down, but they made Baidu and Alibaba in China. Whether it is an artificial intelligence bubble or a technology bubble, the winner is king. After the baptism of capital winter, China will precipitate some great artificial intelligence companies in two or three years, which will help our country to shift from real estate resource-based economic growth to scientific and technological innovation.
02
20 19, the artificial intelligence bubble will burst.
In the past 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 the capital winter. In my opinion, the 20 19 artificial intelligence bubble will also burst, 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, driverless has also reported news of layoffs, contraction and company team discord. Because unmanned driving is very difficult, it takes a long time to land. There is no income in this process, and it depends entirely on capital investment. Now investors are very cautious, and driverless driving must bear the brunt. 20 19, the arms race in the field of unmanned driving will be unprecedented.
Now the project is going to be financed, and the rule is to halve the valuation. (This valuation is relative. The valuation of good projects is 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 want to find some investors with resources and brand endorsements.
03
Anxious investor
Whenever the wind blows, investors are also very anxious for fear of missing opportunities. Therefore, there are also some investors in the market who don't understand artificial intelligence technology and rely entirely on feelings.
If investors know the operating income and profit of a project and can invest according to the valuation of listed companies, then primary school students can also invest. Investors can only succeed easily if they invest in industries they know and know. If it's just chasing the wind, it must be a chicken feather in the end. Just like the blockchain that started at 20 18, this phenomenon is obvious.
Innolux mainly pays attention to 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 entrepreneurship. Scientific and technological innovation needs 10 thousand hours of accumulation, and scientists have accumulated scientific research, technology and team in the past five or ten years;
Second, into the ground. Scientists can't succeed only with good technology, no landing ability and no 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 the science and technology competition is a global competition, and I hope that the entrepreneurial team will have an international vision.
If scientists want to become entrepreneurs, they need to cross a gap: from technology to products and from 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 technology industries. If investors do not conduct in-depth research on sub-industries, it is difficult to make professional judgments on the project.
In 20 15, we invested in black technology when there was only one idea and one PPT in the future. Now that three rounds of financing have been completed, the valuation has doubled. To make upfront investment, most projects are in the initial stage, just like the future of black technology. This requires investors to judge whether there is room for imagination in the market of products and technologies of the project, and whether it can develop into a company with a valuation of several billion after three to five years.
A company that makes 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 upfront investment, 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 it, you will miss many opportunities.
04
The era of scientific and technological innovation
In the past few years, most start-ups in China have been innovative. China has a large population base, and with the bonus of mobile Internet, e-commerce, economic enjoyment and other enterprises have developed very rapidly in the past few years. However, the Sino-US trade war on 20 18 made us soberly realize that China lacks its own core technology, and many "buildings" are built on the basis of others.
From the general trend, China really needs scientific and technological innovation:
On the one hand, the cost of foreign companies in China is increasing at the rate of 100% every year. It has become a trend to flee China and emigrate 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 gaps in the industry.
In addition, China has trained 60 million university graduates and 4.5 million graduate students in the past 10 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 personnel. For example, the chip semiconductor industry needs long-term technology research and development and capital accumulation, and China lags behind the United States in algorithm. However, China's population base and market are large enough to obtain a lot of data. Therefore, China leads the United States in application.
For example, Inno's "Imagination Technology" uses deep learning technology to assist doctors in analyzing medical image data such as DR, CT and MRI. When this company found us, we decided to invest on the same 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 of the University of Chicago. The team is not inferior to similar projects in the United States in algorithm technology. Their advantage is that the medical image data obtained far exceeds that of the United States. In terms of diagnosis and treatment, the data of a domestic tertiary hospital in one month is bigger than that of American competitors; In 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 has seen 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.
05
Try 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 car 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 10 years, Apple led to the outbreak of the smart phone industry chain, which led to the increase of the market value of esoteric film technology co., Ltd., lt and Yu Shun Optoelectronics by 10 times. In the era of smart cars, with the settlement of Tesla in China, investment opportunities in the intelligent networked automobile industry chain are constantly emerging, such as unmanned vehicles, key core components, V2V, V2X and networked automobile information security.
In terms of intelligent manufacturing, Japanese factories were very advanced and highly automated 20 years ago. In China, most of the production capacity of textile industry, garment industry and some heavy industries is very backward.
A year ago, I visited many 3C manufacturing enterprises, and the defect detection still needs manual detection by female workers. I stared at it in front of a magnifying glass all day, and my original good eyes finally failed. If you use machine vision, you 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. This has been fully automated in Japan for a long time. When we eliminate unreasonable industries and excess capacity, some new forces will surely emerge.
In the past 40 years, China has developed rapidly because of the dividend of reform and opening up. Over the past 20 years, China's housing prices have never fallen, constantly challenging everyone's imagination. In the next three years, from the internal and external point of view, China's economy will be in a period of adjustment, and economic slowdown and capital winter are normal. Because China has a huge population base and engineers' bonus, it may be another period of rapid development in three to five years.
But 20 19, the winner is king, entrepreneurs should be more pragmatic, strive for progress steadily, manage their own cash flow, do more certain things, and don't blindly expand. With abundant capital, enterprises can do aggressive things. Now enterprises should operate more stably and strive to live longer.
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