As the leader in the enterprise-level AI segmentation track and the AI unicorn that took the lead in sprinting to the capital market, Innovation Qizhi officially landed on the capital market on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
With the completion of the IPO work, on January 27, Innovative Qizhi, known as the first stock of "AI +Manufacturing", was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and the Hong Kong stock market also ushered in another AI company rising star in the AI listing wave.
It is worth noting that in the Hong Kong stock market where AI concept stocks are still scarce targets, the listing of Innovative Qizhi is only a small step in the development process of industry and manufacturing, but it is a big step in the popularization of "AI + manufacturing", and it is also the beginning of AI respecting business in industry and manufacturing and deepening business.
According to the research report of relevant securities companies, the market fully recognizes the long-term growth of the AI track, the short-term and medium-term market pays attention to the application scenarios and landing rhythm of AI, and the landing ability of AI companies has become the main differentiation. Looking forward to 2022, the emergence of mature application scenarios, the intensive catalysis of the "14th Five-Year Plan" policy, and the opening of the AI unicorn listing tide will become the three major opportunities to accelerate the landing of the AI industry.
In the view of Xu Hui, CEO of Innovation Qizhi, listing is only the first step, in the future, the company will be more determined to do corporate services, empower manufacturing, from technology, products, engineering, commercialization, customer success and other aspects, to help enterprise-level customers, especially manufacturing customers, to reduce costs and increase efficiency, industrial upgrading, and constantly improve its level of digital transformation.
At the same time, as unicorns have successively moved to the stage of the secondary capital market, the field of artificial intelligence has also begun a baptism of "from the virtual to the real", and with the listing of innovative Qizhi, this baptism will also be quietly accelerated by leveraging capital.
Next month, it will turn four years old and the first share of "AI+Made" will enter the market
The heat of the AI market has not been affected by the deep winter in the north. At the beginning of January, the popularity of SenseTime Technology, the big brother of the "FOUR LITTLE DRAGONs of AI", had not yet subsided, and when the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger approached, the innovative Qizhi, which was known as the first stock of "AI+Manufacturing", came again.
On January 17, Qizhi, an innovation in the deep-rooted AI manufacturing track, officially opened its global sale. Innovation Qizhi not only attracted bets from international investment institutions such as SoftBank early, but also exceeded market expectations for small and medium-sized investors, and the placement announcement released on January 26 showed that the public subscription was nearly 13 times.
On January 27, after the Hong Kong Stock Exchange landed on the capital market, Innovation Qizhi also officially became the first stock of "AI+Manufacturing". Due to the innovative QIChi AI solution focusing on the industrial track, it is unique among many AI companies, and the company officially landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 27 as the "first share of AI+ manufacturing".
For a company that will only celebrate its fourth birthday next month, the development speed of innovation qizhi can be described as rapid. Compared with the "FOUR LITTLE DRAGONS OF AI" such as SenseTime, the innovative Qizhi, which was founded in February 2018 and has only been established for 4 years, can be described as a rising star in the AI industry.
2018 is the first year of the industry's recognized commercialization of artificial intelligence, retail, finance, transportation, medical care, education and other scenario-based applications have been fully rolled out, and the state has also released a new generation of artificial intelligence development direction. In February of this year, innovative Qizhi was born.
According to Frost & Sullivan, in terms of revenue in 2020, Chuangxin Qizhi is the third largest AI technology-driven solution provider in China's enterprise-level AI solution market, and is also the leading AI technology-driven solution provider in China's manufacturing AI solution market.
It is worth noting that as one of the first companies to "eat meat" in this round of AI listing, it completed the listing in only four years of establishment, where does the successful password of innovative Qizhi come from? Xu Hui, CEO of Innovation Qizhi, summarized the DNA of Innovative Qizhi into 4 words - "growth", "difference", "scarcity" and "pragmatism". "Growth is the first strategy. In order to achieve this strategy, we allocate our resources from the aspects of technology, platform, product, commercialization, etc., and cultivate high-quality customers like Platinum Card, and continue to generate repurchases to help us grow. ”
This growth is also directly reflected in specific data. According to the financial information disclosed by Innovation Qizhi, from 2018 to 2019, the revenue of Innovation Qizhi increased from RMB37.21 million to RMB229 million, and maintained strong growth in 2020 until RMB462 million. Revenue grew at a compound annual growth rate of 252.5% from 2018 to 2020. Revenue in the first three quarters of 2021 was 553 million yuan, an increase of 85.8% over the first three quarters of 2020.
The strong growth in revenue has also led to an increase in the company's profits. The data shows that the gross profit of Innovation Qizhi has increased from 23.39 million yuan in 2018 to 135 million yuan in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 139.8% from 2018 to 2020. In the first three quarters of 2021, Innovation Qizhi achieved a gross profit of 171 million yuan, compared with 85.27 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2020, an increase of 100.4% year-on-year.
Don't be a hunter and be a farmer In the AI to B market, I deeply cultivate the manufacturing industry
"In less than four years, Innovation Chi chi has proven that we are a sports car running at high speed in this market, but this sports car is two-wheel drive." In Xu Hui's view, the technology research and development and products of the front wheel, the industrialization and commercialization of the rear wheel, constitute the high-speed model of our two-wheel drive, to drive our high-speed, high-quality growth.
Nowadays, the innovative wisdom that tastes the sweetness is more determined for growth. Xu Hui said that whether it is the past, the present, or the future, we will still firmly take growth as the first strategy, and allocate elements from technology, products, engineering, industry, commercialization and other aspects to jointly help growth.
Today, through strategic focus on subdivision tracks, Innovation Qizhi has now developed into a leading AI technology-driven solution provider in the domestic manufacturing ARTIFICIAL solution market, with a market share of 2.1% in 2020, twice that of the second place. As a result, with the successful listing of the company, Innovation Qizhi also has the title of the first share of "AI+manufacturing" in Hong Kong stocks.
It is worth noting that when machine vision AI companies are piled up in the fields of security and retail, Innovative Qizhi will focus on the manufacturing and financial tracks with fewer players but also imagination space, which also makes it dominant in the market segment.
In fact, unlike the dilemma of "empty talk technology, difficult to land" that existed in the industry before, Innovation Qizhi was positioned in the enterprise-level AI market at the beginning of its establishment, focusing on serving B-end enterprise customers, developing products and solutions according to existing application scenarios, and has provided AI products and solutions for more than 400 customers.
According to Frost & Sullivan, The size of China's enterprise-level AI market will reach about 139.4 billion yuan in 2020, accounting for about 75.0% of the entire AI market, and it is expected to reach about 836.6 billion yuan by 2025, accounting for about 80%.
In general, the target market for artificial intelligence solutions is mainly divided into two directions: to G and to B. "AI to B" is the biggest label that sets Innovative Qizhi apart from the first generation of AI companies.
When Innovative Qizhi was established, the "AI Four Little Dragons" who tasted the artificial intelligence "head soup" already had a considerable scale, and used computer vision technology to form a first-mover advantage in the field of smart security for the government. Taking SenseTime as an example, smart city revenue accounted for 47.6% in the first half of 2021, becoming the most important source of revenue.
Innovative Qizhi adopts a differentiated strategy to target the AI enterprise service market, that is, AI to B. Of course, this is not unrelated to the background of the founders. As the CEO of Innovative Qizhi, Xu Hui has more than 20 years of B2B digital experience, and has served as a senior manager in SAP, IBM, Microsoft, and Wanda, and is well versed in enterprise services.
Although the combination of artificial intelligence and many industries can bring about efficiency improvement and experience optimization, whether systemic AI solutions can be implemented in a specific industry still depends on the level of digitalization, commercialization potential and competitive environment of the industry. Therefore, after serving a number of different industries, Innovation Qizhi ultimately chose to focus on manufacturing and financial services.
In Xu Hui's view, innovative Qizhi is not to choose to be a hunter who "goes where there is an opportunity", but to be a good farmer. We cultivate well and grow together with our customers, so that we can sow in spring, plough in summer, harvest in autumn, and hide in winter. We hope to become a full-lifecycle digital transformation partner for Chinese enterprise customers, especially manufacturing enterprise customers. This is the cultivation of innovative wonders.
From "soft and hard combination" to "soft-based" products and commercialization results are obvious
In the past three years, by cutting into the market from lighthouse customers and creating benchmarking projects, Innovation Qizhi has accumulated AI-based products and solutions for more than 400 customers, including creating a unique model of AI commercialization through strategic integration with national large-scale manufacturing leading enterprises, and has accumulated a large number of benchmarking cases and industry know-how.
The establishment of commercialization has also made the business model of innovative Qizhi receive a good return. In the revenue composition, the revenue generated by manufacturing artificial intelligence products and solutions accounts for the largest proportion of total revenue.
According to the prospectus, "AI+manufacturing" has become the company's largest source of revenue, with manufacturing revenue of 280 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2021, an increase of 251% year-on-year, and the proportion of "AI+manufacturing" revenue has increased to more than 50%.
The deep cultivation of innovation qizhi in the field of manufacturing industry is more from the grasp of the trend of the mainland to a manufacturing power. The data shows that in the past five years, the market size of Artificial Intelligence Solutions for Manufacturing in China is experiencing significant growth, with a compound annual growth rate of 48.3% from 2020 to 2025, and by 2025, China's manufacturing artificial intelligence solutions market is expected to reach 64.9 billion yuan.
"Because China is a manufacturing power, no one will doubt that China is firmly moving from a manufacturing power to a manufacturing power." Xu Hui said that using artificial intelligence and other scientific and technological means to empower digital transformation will play a very important role in China's transformation from a manufacturing power to a manufacturing power.
For manufacturing, "hardware and software" AI solutions are often easier to deploy. Different from the traditional pure software platform, the innovative Chizhi ManuVision machine vision intelligent platform supports compatibility with external hardware devices such as industrial light sources, industrial cameras, manipulators, controllers, etc., and is flexibly integrated into the original production line of the enterprise, without special transformation of the production line, reducing the difficulty and threshold of enterprise application of artificial intelligence.
Combined with the early deepening of understanding of the industry and the scene through customized solutions, this highly flexible "soft and hardware" solution has gradually helped Innovation Qizhi establish a moat.
After the moat was established, Xu Hui had a more far-reaching plan for the product development roadmap of Innovative Qizhi. Based on three proprietary AI platforms developed by Innovation, namely ManuVision Machine Vision Intelligence Platform, MatrixVision Edge Video Intelligence Platform, and Orion Distributed Machine Learning Platform, Innovation Qizhi provides customers with a package of intelligent products and solutions. The whole is divided into two categories, one is designed to help customers improve operational efficiency, this group of products and solutions are mostly software and hardware integrated products and solutions; the other group, the proportion of software is higher, more focused on helping customers improve the efficiency of information intelligence, including data governance, demand forecasting, production digitalization, decision support, marketing and so on. From operational efficiency to information intelligence, from the combination of soft and hard to soft, it constitutes a clear company positioning and productization strategy roadmap.
According to this roadmap, it can be seen that the proportion of software delivery in the future of Innovation Qizhi will gradually increase, which will help to increase the company's gross profit margin and profitability.
In terms of business development, with the advantage of double barriers established in "technology" and "industry understanding", Innovation Qizhi chose to adopt the expansion model of "1+N" cooperation and "1×N", once the company cuts from a certain application scenario and establishes a portfolio of AI products and solutions with lighthouse customers, it can then contact similar companies through services in the same vertical industry and expand its business in the same industry.
Due to the relatively high replacement cost of manufacturing, customers are more likely to form a high stickiness and repurchase with upstream technology suppliers. With the strengthening of the industry and the scenario know-how of innovation, it can abstract the common parts from past projects and form modular products, which will bring about the multiplier effect of revenue growth and lay the foundation for the company's sustainable operation in the future.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, in terms of revenue in 2020, Innovation Qizhi is the third largest AI technology-driven solution provider in China's enterprise-level AI solution market and the largest AI technology-driven solution provider in China's manufacturing AI solution market.
In Xu Hui's view, thanks to national policies such as new infrastructure and the "14th Five-Year Plan" intelligent manufacturing development plan, the company is expected to achieve sustained growth in the manufacturing track. Text/Peng Fei
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