Connect founder | Wisdom Eye Qiu Jianhua: How do we achieve a rare continuous profit in the AI industry

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"Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" (Changsha, reporter Li Yongjun) news, for the domestic artificial intelligence industry, the past 2021 is a milestone turning year. After experiencing ups and downs, on December 30, 2021, AI unicorn SenseTime finally landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Compared with the expected market value of 100 billion yuan at the issuance stage, the market quickly expressed its enthusiasm for the "hard technology" of the artificial intelligence track with real money and silver. In just 4 trading days, SenseTime's share price doubled, and its market value exceeded HK$300 billion. Today, the market capitalization remains at around HK$230 billion.

The "AI Four Little Dragons", led by SenseTime, have taken a real big step forward in capitalization in 2021. In addition to SenseTime's realization of the dream it has been diligently pursued, Cloud Technology and Megvii Technology have also received IPO approvals and are waiting to be listed. Yitu Technology announced the termination of its listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in June 2021.

According to the classification of artificial intelligence subdivisions, the above four small dragons are all divided into computer vision fields. At present, the listing process of the four companies in the first echelon has basically settled.

SenseTime's performance in the capital market has also made a lot of AI houlang eager to try, and wisdom eye is one of them. At the beginning of the new year, Smart Eye has started the Pre-IPO financing process. The founder of the company, which originated in Zhongguancun and is now headquartered in Changsha, has a typical Hunan "hegemonic" characteristics, even with his first acquaintances, it is not difficult to feel his passion for artificial intelligence and the development of the digital economy.

Its pride is that the smart eye recognition technology has won the world's first place in the Megaface Million Scramble Algorithm Challenge held by Google; while the finger vein recognition technology has won the global algorithm challenge championship for three consecutive years in the past three consecutive years; in 2019, the company's super view scene analysis and computing based on deep neural networks won the Wu Jun Intelligent Science and Technology Progress Award, the most awarded in China's intelligent science and technology.

In IDC's Chinese Intelligent Computer Vision Application Market Share (2020) ranking, Smart Eye also entered the top seven, and in front of it are familiar names in Industry such as SenseTime, Megvii, Hikvision, Yuncong, and Yitu.

However, unlike companies such as SenseTime, which "hold a hammer to find a nail", Wisdom Eye began to target application scenarios to do core algorithm and product development. Qiu Jianhua said, "We are one of the few companies in the artificial intelligence industry that has been profitable for many years, which also makes us look different in the industry."

You know, getting rid of losses is still a common problem faced by artificial intelligence companies, including the head bull. According to a report released by An Hui, secretary general of the Artificial Intelligence Industry Innovation Alliance, more than 90% of enterprises in China's AI industry chain are in the loss stage.

Therefore, the continuous profit significance of the "different" wisdom eye is even more extraordinary. Recently, a reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily interviewed Qiu Jianhua. He believes that AI is generally an algorithm start, going left is a chip, going right is a scene, and it is important to do a good job of "algorithm + product".

Qiu Jianhua said that relying on core technologies to deeply cultivate the landing ability of products and scenarios is the real test for artificial intelligence companies. Wisdom Eye has both algorithm capabilities and product landing capabilities, and this "combination fist" ability has helped the company occupy a dominant position in many computer vision application segments such as human resources and social security, medical insurance and finance. What the smart eye needs to think about is how to evolve from AI intelligence to data intelligence in the next step.

A unique approach for serial entrepreneurs

Born in Hengyang, Hunan Province, Qiu Jianhua is a serial entrepreneur and a "return goose" who returned from Beijing to Hunan Province. After graduating from college in 2002, he started a business in his hometown of Hunan, "At that time, he took the 200,000 yuan given by his family and opened a company called Chuangheng, which means to create eternity, that is, he hopes to do a long-term business." ”

Qiu Jianhua's startup, which mainly does secure storage of data, belongs to the category of system integration. By around 2008, the company had achieved tens of millions of dollars in sales and millions of dollars in profits.

Qiu Jianhua said that at this time, the bottleneck of development has been felt. "At that time, it faced two problems, one was that the company did not have independent intellectual property rights, and the other was that Hunan, where it was located, had no radiation capacity at that time."

To have independent technology, there must be cattle people; to have radiation capabilities, you have to go to first-tier cities. In 2009, Qiu Jianhua resolutely decided to go to Beijing to start a new round of entrepreneurship, ran to Zhongguancun, and established Wisdom Eye.

Why did the company name it "Smart Eye"? First, because it was aimed at the face recognition market at that time, and ultimately hoped that the computer could recognize everything, and at the same time let the computer's eyes have human intelligence; the second was biometrics as the core technical field of artificial intelligence, when the domestic technology level was in a state of parallel with the United States.

Qiu Jianhua thus determined that this is a promising market and intends to be an artificial intelligence enterprise with computer vision, deep learning and big data as the core.

He felt fortunate that the first step of starting a business in Beijing was to choose the right industry, "In the direction of entrepreneurship, we have found another way and chosen social security." ”

At that time, the biggest piece of cake in the field of machine vision was security, with a scale of hundreds of billions. However, Qiu Jianhua analyzed that most of the target customers in the security field are at the end of government agencies, large-scale procurement needs to be budgeted a year in advance, and most of them have been occupied by Hikvision and Dahua shares, leaving not many opportunities for innovative enterprises focusing on algorithm research.

In fact, the direction of business to social security is also affected by Qiu Jianhua's first venture. In that year, he changed his data security business from the social security bureau of a prefecture-level city to a number of prefectures and cities, and then into the Hunan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department. Therefore, the first step in the commercialization of smart eyes in Beijing is to freeze the application scenario in the field of social security.

"At that time, only social security and public security really needed face recognition." He explained that public security business is mainly used to pursue fugitive cases, targeting those who do not want to be recognized, so the accuracy requirements are particularly high. The face recognition of social security is mainly used for the pension of the elderly, these people are willing to be recognized, but also willing to cooperate, the difficulty of identification is relatively small.

At that time, the recognition accuracy of face recognition technology was not high, and in social security, user tolerance was better, which could give enterprises more time to upgrade and iterate on technology.

Today, Qiu Jianhua also feels that the choice of the first step of that year has an element of rationality and a factor of luck. As a founder who started from sales rather than technology, Qiu Jianhua will consider more about choosing the track from the needs of the market and the possibility of realization. This may also be the key to the same in the field of artificial intelligence, the wisdom eye can be different from most of the peers who "hold the hammer to find the nail", and finally achieve continuous profitability for many years.

Going left is the chip, and going right is the scene. Qiu Jianhua and Wisdom Eye chose the latter as the way forward. "SenseTime is the technology to pull the capital to hit the market, first out of the hammer, and then find nails." Wisdom eye and they are misplaced development, we are in response to the market, accurate positioning and then do research and development.

From visual intelligence to data intelligence

Half a year after the establishment of Smart Eye, the company's first set of face recognition algorithms came out, and successfully won the bid for a prefecture-level municipal human resources and social security bureau. The Wisdom Eye also kicked off the prelude to the "horse racing" for the national people's society.

In just a few years, the business of Smart Eye Human Resources Society has landed in more than 20 provinces across the country, and the direction has also expanded from endowment insurance to medical insurance, unemployment insurance, work injury insurance, civil service examination and vocational qualification appraisal, and the application scenarios have gradually extended to finance, government and enterprises.

In this process, the company's core technology has been continuously upgraded, and it has also made a breakthrough from face recognition to the field of machine vision, and has developed multi-mode hybrid perception, trusted intelligent computing, graph computing and more than 100 data analysis model operators, truly realizing the whole process of artificial intelligence technology step by step from recognition to analysis to reading to decision-making.

Qiu Jianhua is not from artificial intelligence research and development, and the company is led by Wang Dong, the research and development director of Smart Eye. He is also a key implementer of Qiu Jianhua's "market-based feedback technology" approach.

For more than ten years, based on the needs of the industry, Wisdom Eye has led Wang Dong in the research of key common technologies, gathered the technical teams of colleges and universities such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, and the National Defense Science and Technology Department, devoted themselves to scientific research, obtained more than 100 patents for technological inventions such as artificial intelligence, big data, digital twins, and blockchain, and passed the road and moved to the forefront of the industry.

Qiu Jianhua said that at the beginning of the company's establishment, it chose Zhongguancun, which should also be the easiest place to find scientific and technological talents in China. Today, even if the headquarters is later moved to Changsha, Hunan, the algorithm research center is still located in Beijing.

He introduced that Wang Dong's team won the 2019 Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Science and Technology Progress Award, and won the first place in the ICB-CFVR Challenge for three consecutive years. Moreover, Wisdom Eye has participated in the release of more than 20 national standards and published more than 100 patents.

The market feeds back technology, and technology drives the market. IDC AI market report shows that the market share of smart eye computer vision applications has ranked in the top seven in the country for many years. The annual report during the listing period of the New Third Board shows that as early as 2017, the company's net profit has reached 20.66 million yuan.

In 2014, Qiu Jianhua was invited by Hunan to return to his hometown from Beijing to start a business and set up a subsidiary of Wisdom Eye Hunan. In 2019, the company signed a project investment agreement with Changsha High-tech Zone and its headquarters settled in Changsha. At this point, wisdom eye Changsha general part of the flow market operation and product development, Beijing has become an algorithm center that gathers high-end R & D talents, Shenzhen branch undertakes hardware design and production, a complete artificial intelligence industry chain has taken shape, and the national layout of smart eye has entered a new journey.

Qiu Jianhua believes that at a time when technology is becoming more and more mature, the core driving factors have gradually evolved from AI intelligence to data intelligence, and data intelligence will surely become a new model, new format and new driving force for the next round of industrial digital innovation.

Qiu Jianhua said, "We have served social security and medical insurance for many years, plus other industries, it should be said that we have accumulated data mining and analysis decision-making genes, which provides an innate advantage for the subsequent development of various data intelligent application scenarios." ”

Recently, Qiu Jianhua and senior executives held a meeting, and they are more willing to lead everyone to explore the future in the direction of data intelligence, combined with artificial intelligence, natural language processing and other technologies, to build a digital city intelligent body that integrates perception, intelligent cognition, interconnection of all things and human-computer interaction. Qiu Jianhua explained that promoting the reform of "digitization", "digital intelligence" and "digital governance" of the economy will ultimately promote the reform and upgrading of the digital economy, so that the government and enterprises will be more efficient and the society will be fairer.

Social security prevents pension fraud through biometrics; medical insurance supervises the loss of medical insurance funds through AI intelligence; customs builds a super analysis and decision-making brain to combat smuggling through big data analysis; and public security realizes the control system and synthetic operation of key personnel through the integration of material and information. Therefore, in essence, the three core business scenarios of medical health, smart finance and digital city that the company has deeply cultivated can ultimately be attributed to the route of "governance-mining-analysis-prediction" of data.

Qiu Jianhua said for example: Smart eye service medical insurance for many years, now should consider the introduction of AI and data intelligence into smart pharmacies, online reading, auxiliary diagnosis and treatment and other areas that need data mining and prejudgment; in the field of human resources and social security with the elderly who receive pensions for many years, and make full use of mobile Internet, Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain and other technologies to build C-end precision health care services, truly relying on AI intelligence, so that data connection and cognition of everything, Ultimately, improve the operational efficiency of health care and benefit society.

Qiu Jianhua concluded that if the company's technical services can evolve from industry services at the identification level to "digital city" services at the data cognition level; then the smart eye will truly evolve from the "identification and processing" of AI to the "mining and cognition" of data. At that time, the company was not an artificial intelligence enterprise in the broad sense, but a "data technology company" with deep value to society.