Chinese university bully entrepreneurship

7 years, to make the valuation of 30 billion

Cloud from the science and technology story, the origin of Chinese Academy of Sciences in a laboratory .

Zhou Xi, born in 1981 in Neijiang, Sichuan Province, has been known as a "child prodigy" since he was young, and at the age of 18 he was admitted to the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), where he was enrolled in the Department of Electronic Science and Technology. At the age of 18, he enrolled in the Department of Electronic Science and Technology at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), which is known as the "Cradle of Scientists", where he began to make a name for himself as a world champion in voiceprint recognition.

After completing his master's degree at CUHK, Zhou continued his education and came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2006 to pursue a Ph. It is worth mentioning that Zhou Xi's doctoral advisor was the "father of computer vision", Prof. Hsu-Tao Huang, and the latter only recruited three students in the world that year.

During his doctoral studies, Zhou shifted his research direction from speech recognition to image recognition. This process is undoubtedly painful, and Zhou Xi has encountered many difficulties, he has recalled, "the experimental results will basically be very bad, because the program, the derivation may be written wrong, the assumptions may also be wrong. In such a long chain, very often we still don't even know what's wrong."

But soon Zhou Xi found a breakthrough and built a Cluster server array at UIUC to cross-practice the speech recognition and image recognition fields, and the results obtained were remarkable. Since then, Zhou Xi led the team on behalf of UIUC to participate in a number of international competitions one after another, successively defeated MIT, the University of Tokyo, IBM, Sony and other famous research institutions, to get six times the World Intelligent Recognition Competition Champion, and published dozens of papers, was cited thousands of times.

After graduating with his PhD, Zhou Xi received several high-paying job offers. In 2011, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) planned to establish a research institute in the southwest region, and the preparer, Yuan Jiahu (now the president of CAS Chongqing Research Institute), traveled to the US three times to meet with Prof. Huang Hutao and Zhou Xi, hoping to bring in the world's top scientific and technological talents for the country. Yuan's sincerity and commitment allowed Zhou Xi to make the most important decision of his life - to go back to China to work.

Therefore, after 5 years in the US, Zhou Xi gave up his privileged life and career, and co-founded the Intelligent Multimedia Center of Chongqing Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CQRI) with the National University of Singapore and the University of Illinois, engaging in research in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), including image recognition and face recognition technologies.

In 2015, Zhou Xi made a big decision to lead his team into entrepreneurship. Talking about the original intention of the venture, he once said, cutting-edge technology entrepreneurship, if the researchers can not personally do, the chance of success is equal to zero, "personally, perhaps only a very small chance of success, even so, I am willing to take a shot."

So the cloud from the technology in March of this year was formally established, and first aimed at the bank. At that time, in order to get a bank identity verification project, cloud from the technology team held a lot of days, wrote a dozen pages of the program. The result was that the bank said it had never seen such a short program, at least 300 pages.

In the end, for this order, Zhou Xi led the team to spend 2 years to submit 48 kinds of programs, until the internal test accuracy rate of 99.8%, the customer signed the contract. "This incident made me realize that in order to put the technology on the ground, we need to be rooted in the industry and grow with the industry ****." Zhou Xi has recalled.

To this day, the cloud from the technology to realize the core technology from intelligent perception to cognition, decision-making closed loop. The company's self-developed AI technologies such as cross-mirror tracking, 3D structured light face recognition, dual-layer heterogeneous deep neural network and adversarial neural network technology are all at the industry's leading level. In terms of business layout, the cloud from the technology has also been in the wisdom of the financial, wisdom governance, wisdom travel, wisdom business four areas have gradually realized mature landing application.

Of course, continuing losses are still a problem that cloud from technology can not ignore. The prospectus shows that its revenue from 2018 to 2020 will be 484 million yuan, 807 million yuan and 755 million yuan respectively; the net loss will be 200 million yuan, 1.763 billion yuan and 720 million yuan respectively, and it has not yet realized a profit.

According to the prospectus, the valuation of the cloud from the technology is about 30-40 billion , but the specifics still depend on the issue. The company's business is a very important part of the company's strategy," he said, "I know it's hard, but I didn't expect it to be this hard. The good thing is that he insisted on it, cloud from the technology now from the landing of the Science and Technology Board is only a matter of time. Zhou Xi is about to get his first IPO.

11 rounds of financing, VC/PE team is huge

IPO twists and turns

In the "AI four little dragons". The first time I saw this, I was able to get a good look at it, and I was able to get a good look at it, and I was able to get a good look at it.

Artificial Intelligence year 2015, just established from the cloud from the technology angel round of financing 60 million yuan, investors for artificial intelligence companies Jadu technology, 80000 yuan, the end of the same year, the cloud from the A round of financing nearly 200 million yuan. In the words of the investors, the market was not particularly clear, but the cloud from the valuation has been very high.

Subsequently, AI exploded in the country. 2017, the cloud from the B round of science and technology received 500 million yuan of financing. At this time, we can see many state-owned background organizations, such as Yuanhe Origin, Guangzhou Fund, Yuexiu Industrial Fund, etc.. Shunwei Capital, which is backed by the industrial group Xiaomi, also came, as well as the Star River Group and the academicians of the Academy of Engineering initiated the establishment of the fund Star River - Leaders of the world, as well as the RMB fund Puhua Capital, Prosperity Investment, etc., and at the same time, there is also the presence of the old shareholders of 80000 TeleServices Capital and Jadu Technology.

Another landmark node in 2018, the cloud from the science and technology B + round of financing of more than 1 billion yuan, financing scale and B round compared to the expansion of double , Guangdong Science and Technology Finance, China Guoxin Holding, Guangzhou Fund, Lian Sheng Capital, Bohai Industry Fund, Zhangjiang Star River, Qianhai De Sheng, Yuexiu Jinzhong, and other nearly 10 institutions collectively rushed to the year. 2019. Cloud from Technology has also gained the support of organizations such as Xinding Capital, Jinquan Investment, Zhong'an Capital, and Shanjin Capital.

2020 is even more needless to say. 2020 May, the cloud from the technology C round of financing 1.8 billion yuan, the investor contains the China Network Investment, Shanghai Guosheng Group, Nansha Jinzhong, the Yangtze River Delta Industrial Innovation Fund, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Haier Jinzhong, Xinzhongli, Industrial Bank of China Asia Investment, Gaojie Capital and other well-known institutions. At that time, there were reports that the cloud from the technology is expected to be listed at the end of 2020.

But the subsequent road to listing from the cloud has experienced a series of twists and turns. After the completion of the C round of financing, the cloud was soon included in the U.S. Department of Commerce "entity list". An investor mentioned that he was worried about the possible impact on the later business development, but fortunately this did not delay the listing process. 2020 in August, the cloud from the technology in Guangdong Securities Regulatory Bureau for counseling filing registration, December of the same year to submit a prospectus, but soon included in the U.S. sanctions list.

More dramatically, after experiencing inquiries, at the end of March 2021, the cloud from the technology due to the expiration of the financial information, the listing application was suspended from examination. "This is the most painful time" , described one investor in Beijing. Subsequently, in June 2021, the cloud from the technology to update the financial information, the SSE resumed the listing review process. 2021 July, the cloud from the technology successfully through the Science and Technology Board on the municipal party committee deliberations, more than a ray of light.

Since then there has been a long wait. Just yesterday (April 6), the cloud from the technology finally through the Science and Technology Board registration. An investor involved in the financing of the cloud from the investors lamented that this is the most upsetting project for him, "where the project will pass the confidence of the almost destroyed". The next step is to wait for the cloud from the technology IPO bell.

The last AI unicorn,

Sighing, we are heading for a different destiny

The cloud from the science and technology finally waited for the IPO, announcing that this is the end of the era.

Once upon a time, no VC did not invest in AI. data show that in 2015-2018, the frequency of investment in the field of AI and the total amount of investment have grown rapidly, and at the peak in 2018, the total amount of investment in this field was more than one hundred billion yuan, and the number of investment pens was close to 500. Financing seems to have become a race, and the industry's financing records have been refreshed over and over again, becoming a rare scene in China's venture capital history.

At that time, almost every investment organization was asked about AI, and the answer was either "we have invested in it" or "we are looking at it". It is in such a hot scene, to the "AI four dragons" as the representative of a number of startups came into being.

Among them, the cloud from the technology was established the latest , 2015 - while the business soup technology was established in 2014, the figure of technology was established in 2012, Kuangshi technology was established in 2011. Along with the AI financing frenzy, the AI four little dragons were hot for a while.

But the good times don't last long, and the domestic AI industry has taken a sharp turn for the worse under the question of burning money and losing money. "I haven't looked at AI startups for a long time," a Beijing VC investor once confessed to the investment community. With the AI financing winter, the cloud from the technology has become one of the few remaining AI startups among the ranks of unicorns.

And once there is no blood transfusion, there are not many choices in front of the AI company: either quietly shut down, or seek the road to market. Around and around, the "four little dragons of AI" have each embarked on a different fate.

On December 30, 2021, the business soup technology officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the latest market value of up to 200 billion Hong Kong dollars, becoming the first domestic AI shares. If according to the original plan, business soup technology should have been completed in mid-December IPO. results in December 10th sudden change, due to geopolitical reasons had to postpone the issue. In this game of life and death, the company chose to steadfastly promote the IPO - only after a week of adjustment, once again announced the reopening of the public offering, and ultimately successfully listed.

And others have a very bumpy road to market. As early as November 2020, the KTB announced that Itu Technology IPO was accepted; just one month later, the four little dragons in the latest time of establishment of the cloud from the technology, KTB IPO was also accepted; then in March 2021, Kuangyi Technology also declared the KTB listing.

Surprisingly, at the beginning of July 2021, etu technology initiative to withdraw, the IPO tour came to an abrupt end. The same month, the cloud from the science and technology on the meeting was passed, the absent vision technology also two months later on the meeting was passed. Now, after submitting the registration of more than 8 months, cloud from the technology from the first Kuangyi technology was approved for registration. According to the SSE's latest display, Kuangyi Technology registration application is currently in a state of suspension, due to the company's financial report update.

And another AI company with high hopes, GLM, has not performed as well as it should have after the listing. Founded in 2013, the company has received at least seven rounds of financing before going public, with a number of well-known VC/PEs behind it, and was once considered by the VC community to be valued at $300 billion. However, in March of this year, the deep pupil of the Geling officially landed on the Science and Technology Board, but the opening of the market is broken, the latest market value of only 5 billion yuan, it is really saddening.

Even if dismal, but listed at least there is a chance to turn around. Primary market investors lamented: "The situation now is wherever you can get on .AI companies to do the landing of various industries, the spread is very large, the cost of investment is very high, the listing is certainly to ensure that there is a sustained cash flow injection." This time, the time left for AI unicorns is really not much.