Myung Min is from Ao Fei Temple
Qubits | Official account QbitAI
AI+ manufacturing of the first share of innovative Qizhi, officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange!
After the opening of the market at 9:30 a.m. today, Innovation Chi chi (2121. HK) had a share price of up to HK$27.00, exceeding the issue price (HK$26.30), and the total market capitalization once reached HK$15 billion.
However, due to the large environmental impact of Hong Kong stocks, its stock price began to decline after a slight rise, and as of 11:00 a.m. it had fallen to HK$22.20.
Founded in 2018, Innovation Qizhi is an AI subsidiary of Innovation Factory.
With Kai-Fu Lee as chairman, kai-fu Lee is focused on providing AI solutions for manufacturing, financial services and other industries.
In the past four years since its establishment, Innovation Qizhi has become a "bellwether" in China's manufacturing AI solution market, attracting a number of well-known investments including CICC, Huaxing and SoftBank.
This is also the second AI concept stock welcomed by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange within a month after SenseTime.
Key financial data
According to the prospectus, the revenue of Innovation Qizhi in 2020 was 462 million, compared with 229 million in 2019, an increase of 101.75% year-on-year.
Revenue for the first three quarters of 2021 was $553 million.
On the other side of the sharp increase in revenue, the loss is also gradually narrowing.
Adjusted net loss was $160 million in 2019, down to $144 million in 2020 and $81 million in the first three quarters of 2021.
The net loss ratio further decreased to 14.65% from the initial 121.96%.
In terms of research and development, the investment in innovation Qizhi is also very large. Over the years, it has maintained a ratio of more than 50% of technical research and development and product experts.
R&D investment in 2019 and 2020 was 113 million and 182 million respectively, and direct investment was 177 million in the first three quarters of last year.
This high investment can also be quantified in terms of intellectual property rights, according to the latest data, Innovation Qizhi has applied for 634 AI-related patents and registered 126 AI-related patents, including 79 invention patents.
What is Innovation Chi Chi Chi?
From another business point of view, Innovation Qizhi focuses on the "AI+" series, providing AI solutions for manufacturing, finance and other industries.
Among them, the main areas of AI+ manufacturing include automotive equipment, 3C high-tech, OLED panel semiconductors, engineering and construction, steel smelting, energy and electricity, etc.
This part of the business is also the main source of innovation Qizhi's revenue, bringing 281 million yuan of revenue to the company in the first three quarters of 2021 alone, accounting for 50.8%. Revenue in 2019 and 2020 was 0.78 billion and 193 million, respectively.
In terms of AI+ financial services, Innovation Qizhi mainly improves and maintains the reliability, availability and security of information for financial institutions through AI technology.
In the first three quarters of 2020, under the influence of the epidemic, this business also once provoked the revenue "beam", accounting for more than half of the total business.
According to the prospectus, as of September 30, 2021, Chuangxin Qizhi already has 130 customers.
Behind the provision of multi-industry AI solutions, the core technology comes from the Orion platform.
The platform can train three kinds of algorithm models, namely the computational vision algorithm model for defect detection, object localization, and OCR, the edge video analysis algorithm model for understanding video, and the machine learning model for intelligent prediction and intelligent decision-making.
Innovative Equity Structure
Innovative Qizhi is chaired by Kai-Fu Lee and Hui Xu as CEO.
The major shareholders are Innovation Factory, Innovation Factory Yucheng, Wang Hua and Ms. Tao Ning. Together, it holds approximately 30.01% of the issued share capital (26.24%, 1.68%, 1.68% and 0.42% respectively), closely following the global offering of 27.61%.
Founded 4 years ago, the development speed of innovative Qizhi has not been underestimated.
In the 10 months of its establishment, it won 500 million yuan of financing and completed more than 400 million yuan of A round and A+ round financing.
Promoted to AI unicorn in 2020 and completed Series C financing.
Last year, Innovation Qizhi completed C+ and D rounds of financing, and SoftBank became a cornerstone investor during the IPO.
At the listing site, CEO Xu Hui sighed:
Today is an important step in innovating Qizhi, but going public is not the ultimate goal of the company, just an important mileage and gas station.
Kai-Fu Lee's practice: turning belief into seeing
It is worth noting that the innovation of Qizhi from 0 to 1 in just over three years, and then to the IPO listing, can not be described as a speed.
The key behind it is inseparable from the firm determination and support of the innovation workshop and Kai-Fu Lee.
Even in the transformation of hard technology, the technology investment model of "tipboard incubation + comprehensive empowerment" has been practiced.
As the most AI-based and hard-technology investment institution in China and even in the world, Innovation Factory has created a model of "spire incubation" + fund investment, which deeply helps those who specialize in new entrepreneurs in the new technology innovation cycle.
The so-called spire incubation, different from the incubation of the "office leasing" model on the market, the innovation workshop adopts the research and exploration of the world's cutting-edge technology trends, actively searches for high-quality scientist project targets, and uses the "science and technology investment + comprehensive empowerment" model formed by the industry's professional investment post-investment team to carry out in-depth incubation of projects.
The so-called comprehensive empowerment is to follow the whole process from technology landing to industry exploration, to market development, financing counseling, and from initial products to marketization.
In the field of AI, Turing Award winner Alan Kay once famously said: the best way to predict the future is to create it.
Behind the innovation of Qizhi is actually the practice and creation of an opportunity to predict the future by Innovation Factory and Kai-Fu Lee.
As early as 4 years ago, Kai-Fu Lee made multiple predictions about the development trend of artificial intelligence from technology to landing:
For example, China is fully embracing the four waves of AI, namely Internet intelligence, business intelligence, physical world intelligence, and fully automatic intelligence, these four waves occur at the same time, mutual empowerment, will be combined with the real economy to create huge economic value.
Moreover, in speeches on many occasions, Kai-Fu Lee also constantly stressed that AI innovation is changing from a scientist-led black technology to a productivity engine that deeply empowers the industry and helps industrialization and upgrading in an all-round way.
At that time, the "anti-consensus" pointed out that ai landing is entering a new cycle of "technical people + industrial people".
At the time, however, this forward-looking rhetoric was bold. Because whether it is global or domestic AI four small tigers, the helmsman is a scientist and a technical genius.
In order to let more people see their own belief, Innovation Factory and Kai-Fu Lee decided to jump into the game and practice it themselves.
On the one hand, in the track scene, the three important stages of innovative Qizhi card slot "commercial intelligence, physical world intelligence, and automatic intelligence" are aimed at using AI to empower relatively traditional industries such as manufacturing and finance.
On the other hand, on the team, Kai-Fu Lee invited Xu Hui, former vice president of Microsoft Greater China, who has more than 20 years of experience in B2B enterprise services, as co-founder and CEO, and the CTO was Zhang Faen, former chairman of the technical committee of Baidu Cloud Computing Division.
Form "technical" and "commercial" two-wheel drive models.
In the end, in just over 3 years, the innovation of Qizhi skyrocketed and stood out in the fiercely competitive AI landing.
Citing a third-party report by Frost & Sullivan, Innovation Qizhi is the largest SUPPLIER of AI technology-driven solutions in China's manufacturing AI solution market. In the IDC 2019-2020 AI report, China ranked 6th in the market share of AI computer vision applications. In the IDC 2021 H1 report, The Market Share of Innovative Qizhi's AI computer vision applications in China has jumped to nowhere.
With the landing of Innovation Qizhi and the IPO listing, Innovation Factory and Kai-Fu Lee have also realized the future they predicted in a way that created the future.
And in the meantime, the DUAL engines of AI+ industry, scene AI, and business technology have also begun to be widely accepted and recognized by the industry.
I once set out because I believed, but now I finally use the results to let everyone see.
More importantly, with the increasing encouragement of hard scientific and technological innovation and the transformation of production, education and research, the model of innovation and wisdom may also become a model and a new paradigm in the new wave of hard technology innovation and entrepreneurship.
The case value and long-term impact of innovation will not stop at this time, place and body.
Innovative Chi Chi Chi Prospectus:
https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2022/0117/2022011700008_c.pdf
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