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Many of the technology bulls who left The Baidu autonomous driving team have started their own businesses, almost all of them focus on the field of autonomous driving hardware, and commercialization is even better than Baidu.
This article was originally published by Wumiancaijing
Author: Shi Yanfen
Editor: Chen Jian
Design: Lan Sheng
Intern: Huang Ting
The Autonomous Driving Business Group (IDG), which has been raised for 8 years, is being expelled from its home by Baidu.
On December 20, according to Tencent's "Deep Net", in the first quarter, IDG was transferred to Baidu's wholly-owned subsidiaries, and some commercial departments needed to formulate and complete annual revenue indicators, and linked annual revenue indicators to costs.
In the past, Baidu has been looking for landing scenarios for its own autonomous driving solutions, but it has not been taken seriously by car manufacturers. This year, Baidu cooperated with Geely to build cars and set up Jidu Automobile, which is expected to be mass-produced in 2023; at the same time, Baidu has also accelerated the automatic driving online ride-hailing platform Radish Run, which is expected to achieve profitability in 2025.
In other words, IDG, which came out of the academic hall of Baidu Research Institute, invested more than 10 years to learn to commercialize.
But those who left IDG are already ahead of the curve: Horizon has stuffed hundreds of thousands of self-driving chips into the saddles of SAIC, Great Wall, Ideal and other cars; Heduo Technology's automatic parking system was installed in Weima Automobile earlier than Baidu; White Rhino built a terminal instant delivery unmanned vehicle for Yonghui Supermarket and Dingdang Fast Medicine...
Punching and killing the teacher, the apprentices are already enjoying the dividends of the times.
The pioneers fled
In May 2015, Yu Kai, who was regarded as the "initiator of Baidu autonomous driving", left his job and led a group of outstanding Baidu engineers to found the self-driving chip company "Horizon".
Yu Kai single-handedly founded the Baidu Deep Learning Research Institute (IDL) and led the Baidu self-driving car project, just two years after Baidu officially laid out autonomous driving.
Cheyun Network believes that in the eyes of some people, Yu Kai was the first to do the automatic driving project in Baidu, which made the country have a relatively good innovation ecology, which is equivalent to sowing the seeds of revolution.
Yu Kai has attracted a lot of talents for Baidu, among which Wu Enda, who took over as the research institute, was found by him.
Baidu released an internal letter announcing Ng's entry, and on the same day, six artificial intelligence experts expressed their intention to join Baidu through email, and these people were cattle people who Had been in contact with Baidu many times before but had not won it.
The soul figures left, and the IDL Lab collapsed quickly.
Leifeng Network has reported that before Yu Kai left, the IDL internal project was getting more and more resistant to advancement, and the most obvious feeling was that there was no money and resources, and everyone did not know what to do.
Ni Kai, Gu Jiawei and others followed In Yu Kai's footsteps and left Baidu, and they were also members of the "Young Marshal Plan".
▲ Ni Kai, Yu Kai, and Gu Jiawei all worked at Baidu.
At the beginning of the IDL' establishment, talent and technology were the most scarce, so the "Young Marshal Program" was launched to attract more young technical talents. The "young marshals" also have the opportunity to obtain "Baidu Angel Investment" and start their own internal entrepreneurship.
But in fact, the "young marshals" have not been able to start a business within Baidu.
On the contrary, after leaving, Ni Kai founded Heduo Technology, focusing on autonomous driving solutions for highways and valet parking, and Gu Jiawei established Wuling Technology, focusing on intelligent robots.
In addition, Bao Junwei (who was the head of computing infrastructure at Baidu's Silicon Valley R&D center) and Li Yimin (who was the technical head of the IDG sensor team) co-founded the lidar company Innovusion; Zhang Tianlei took his Classmates from Tsinghua University and also Baidu colleagues Li Bo and He Bei to create the main line technology specializing in driverless truck tracks.
Zhu Lei, head of Cloud Computing and Big Data at Baidu, has founded two companies, one is Mushroom Car Association, doing urban smart transportation solutions such as Robotaxi, Robobus, autonomous driving sweepers, patrol cars, and the other is a white rhinoceros, doing terminal instant delivery unmanned vehicles.
After they left, most of them focused on the subdivision of autonomous driving hardware, and Yu Kai's departure basically marked the end of Baidu IDL's hardware research and development.
The "apprentice" picks the fruit
The gradual decline of commercialization makes it difficult for Baidu to support young marshals to start a business within.
In 2015, Baidu Research Institute separated the Baidu Autonomous Driving Division, which was headed by Wang Jin. Wang Jin announced that Baidu's self-driving cars will be "commercially available in three years and mass-produced in five years.".
At that time, after two years of technical research, Baidu autonomous driving believed that the turning point of commercialization was coming.
Because a year ago, BMW and Baidu signed a cooperation agreement to show BMW's highly automated driving models that can be driven on China's municipal roads after the completion of the three-year cooperation project. But near the end of the project, which was 10 months away, the two sides terminated their cooperation.
It was during the cooperation with BMW that Yu Kai and Ni Kai left one after another. The year after the failed cooperation with BMW, Wang Jin also left Baidu and founded Jingchi Technology with colleagues Han Xu and Chen Shixi to create an L4-level driverless solution for Baidu.
The newly appointed Lu Qi proposed the Apollo plan to sell Baidu's technology in maps, cloud computing, smart cockpits, and automatic driving, and cooperate with automakers to build cars.
However, the lack of interest of car companies, in addition to Weima, which has Baidu capital injection, the mass production vehicles of other car companies have not seen Baidu's figure in the external publicity. According to Caixin, a domestic first-line car company was included in the cooperation list just by using Baidu Maps.
A year later, Lu Qi also left Baidu.
Instead, some startups that left Baidu have also joined Baidu Apollo's ecological partners, such as Horizon, White Rhino, Mainline Technology, Innovusion, etc.
In the trend of loading autonomous driving assistance systems, companies such as Horizon and Innovusion that insist on doing intelligent car supply chains have ushered in opportunities for the development of autonomous driving.
Horizon has stuffed hundreds of thousands of self-driving chips into the saddles of cars like SAIC, great wall and ideal, and the latest round is valued at $5 billion.
Innovusion received investments from Shunwei Capital and NIO Capital, with a valuation of US$300 million.
How big a chance does Baidu have?
From the perspective of stock price, Baidu autonomous driving is an important business that supports Baidu's market value, but within the company, the importance of automatic driving is still floating.
After Baidu first commercialized the reef, it tried to spin off the autonomous driving business.
After experiencing public opinion storms such as hemophilia and the Wei Zexi incident, Robin Li introduced Lu Qi. Lu Qi made a bold move, integrated Baidu's business into the AI line, and personally led the team to drive autonomously. A year later, Lu Qi left, and Li Zhenyu was responsible for automatic driving, but in terms of reporting relationship, Li Zhenyu did not report to Robin Li like other business units.
At that time, analysts believed that Baidu downgraded the importance of autonomous driving and showed a trend of separation. That year, Robin Li said that "when the unmanned car business needs more funds and partners, it may consider splitting."
In fact, the status of the autonomous driving division in Baidu has not been high. When the Baidu unmanned vehicle project was also led by the Baidu Research Institute, Wu Enda, the head of the Baidu Research Institute, reported to Wang Jin. After the establishment of the autonomous driving division, Wu Enda's reporting object was Robin Li.
This year, LI Zhenyu, the head of IDG, turned to report to Robin Li, but also ushered in a new round of internal structural adjustments.
In the first quarter, IDG was transferred to Baidu's wholly-owned subsidiaries, and some commercial departments needed to formulate and complete annual revenue indicators, and linked annual revenue indicators to costs.
In September, Chu Ruisong, who was responsible for Baidu's cloud to B business, rotated to IDG and split and reorganized IDG's original Vehicle Networking Division.
The original Connected Vehicles Division was changed to the Smart Vehicle Division and a new delivery related business unit was established. The team responsible for project delivery in the former Vehicle Networking Division was dismantled into the new Delivery Business Department. Part of the commercialization team was split into the GTM department (that is, the commercial department), and Su Tan, the former general manager of the Vehicle Networking Division, who originally reported directly to Li Zhenyu, reported to Chu Ruisong instead.
That is to say, under the IDG, Chu Ruisong re-carved out a commercialization department.
▲Baidu IDG's latest organizational framework, picture from the "Deep Web".
This year, baidu's pace of commercialization of autonomous driving has been more urgent.
In this year's Q1 financial report, Robin Li clarified for the first time three business models of Baidu's Apollo business, including front-loading mass production vehicles, autonomous driving technology solutions, and shared unmanned vehicles. Immediately after, Baidu cooperated with Geely to build cars, set up Jidu Automobile, and also accelerated the automatic driving online ride-hailing platform Radish Run.
But the self-driving industry has long since changed.
Since the development of automatic driving, no company has taken the lead in getting tickets for future unmanned vehicles, and mobile phone manufacturers cannot sit still. Huawei and Xiaomi have successively set foot in intelligent car systems and automobile manufacturing.
Traditional car companies are also aware of upgrading. In July this year, CHEN Hong, chairman of SAIC, said, "It is unacceptable for SAIC to cooperate with third-party companies such as Huawei for autonomous driving." It's like another company providing us with a holistic solution, so that it becomes the soul and SAIC becomes the body. ”
"Geely will not help Baidu wholeheartedly, it is just a direction of trial and error, Baidu wants to do it, it has to go through the road of Weilai." Relevant analysts believe.
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