According to the information on the official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, The Cloud has successfully registered from the technology IPO application, which is also the first AI platform enterprise to successfully apply for registration of the IPO of the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and the only all-domestic AI enterprise.
In 2021, artificial intelligence ushered in a big year of dividends, at the same time, the market size of the industry continued to grow rapidly. However, there are more and more questions about AI companies in the capital market, many companies have entered the listing queue mode for a long time, and some have terminated the listing process in this process, and the success of cloud application for registration from the technology IPO is undoubtedly a dawn for the entire industry in this time period.
In recent years, most AI companies have fallen into a circle of losses, which is widely criticized by the industry and outside. Cloud has deeply cultivated human-machine collaboration and artificial intelligence solutions in the business, and the business has achieved multi-field landing, saying that it can still achieve profitability in 2025. It is also the only ai innovator among the current companies that has responded positively to profitability and said that it can achieve profitability.
Industry insiders said that if AI companies lose money in order to develop core technologies, once their technologies are promoted on a large scale in the future, performance may soon be reversed.
The scale of the domestic AI industry has exceeded 300 billion yuan, and the cloud is expected to become the "first share of the AI platform of the science and technology innovation board"
According to the IDC Consulting Report, global AI revenue is expected to grow 19.6% year-on-year to $432.8 billion by 2022 and is expected to exceed the $500 billion mark in 2023. In terms of growth, AI platforms are expected to perform the best, with a five-year CAGR of 34.6%.
ARK reports that in 2030, AI is likely to drive the output of global knowledge workers at a rate of 9%, from $41 trillion to $97 trillion in human-machine collaborative labor output, and AI software companies will have revenues of more than $14 trillion.
2021 is the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, and the artificial intelligence industry has also ushered in a year of policy dividends. The 14th Five-Year Plan proposes to mention "science and technology" many times, and artificial intelligence is one of the priority development areas, proposing to "take scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement as the strategic support for national development", focusing on solving the national card neck project, including artificial intelligence, chips and other fields.
In terms of financing, according to the data of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, in 2020, there were 723 investment and financing incidents in the mainland artificial intelligence industry, with a total amount of 146.837 billion yuan. From January to July 2021, there were 506 financing events, and the financing amount reached 183.992 billion yuan, and the financing amount has exceeded the total amount in 2020.
However, as far as the current situation is concerned, all AI companies, including SenseTime and Megvii, have successfully entered the listing process or successfully listed, while AI companies such as Yunzhisheng and Yitu have chosen to terminate their IPO applications, and the "difficulty of listing" of AI companies has become a hot topic inside and outside the industry.
In the view of most industry insiders, since the second half of 2020, artificial intelligence has entered the bubble period of "death valley", and the market is also putting forward new requirements for AI companies. At a time when the high expectations for AI from all walks of life are falling downward, it is difficult to predict which company will be able to cross the "valley of death".
Since the listing application of Cloud Congji Technology was accepted in December 2020, as one of the "FOUR Little Dragons of AI (Artificial Intelligence)", whether it can be listed at this point in time has received great attention.
The cloud from the technology can take the lead in the science and technology to achieve the successful registration of the science and technology board listing application, from the AI enterprise listing bumps in the bumps, is undoubtedly a dawn on the road of AI companies impacting the listing, but also increased the confidence of the industry. In the future, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence is expected to enter the period of large-scale commercialization, and the industry chain leader will benefit from it.
The architecture, model, products and future development plans of Yuncong are all clear after the release of the listing materials, but if you peel these off to explore the core advantages of Yuncong, there are undoubtedly two points: the practical experience of industry intelligence and the CWOS human-machine collaborative operating system.
Increase the human-machine collaborative operating system, and create product technical barriers with high R&D investment
Regarding the competitiveness of cloud from technology, there are a series of key figures worth mentioning, which depict the development of cloud from technology in some details.
[1, 3, 5]: The core competitiveness of cloud technology can be interpreted by these three figures.
1 means to take the human-machine collaborative operating system as the core;
3 means the integration of "application", "system" and "device" to cover long-tail users through ecological cooperation;
5 is to integrate advantages and creativity in 4+N fields such as smart finance, smart governance, smart business, smart travel and new infrastructure.
In recent years, the scale of cloud revenue from technology has soared, from 484 million in 2018 to 1.076 billion in 2021, with a total revenue of more than 3 billion yuan in the past three years, and the number of projects has increased from 648 in 2018 to 2179 in 2021.
The asset-liability ratio decreased from 49.03% in 2018 to 22.76% in 2021, and the comprehensive gross profit margin increased from 21.7% in 2018 to 37.01% in 2021. At the same time, its losses have further narrowed, from 810 million yuan in 2020 to 630 million yuan in 2021, and its operating conditions have continued to improve.
At the same time, it continues to deepen its cultivation in the field of software and hardware product research and development and core algorithms.
At present, Cloud technology has the core technology of autonomous and controllable and continuous innovation of human-machine collaboration, covering the entire field of image recognition, speech recognition, natural language processing and machine learning in the technical direction, and has built more than 100 closed loop technologies from perception to cognition to decision-making.
In terms of core strategy, Cloud from the founder Zhou Xi proposed that the goal in the next three years is to open up an industrial chain around the human-machine collaborative operating system, so as to become a Tier1 manufacturer in the AI industry, because this will make the cloud more irreplaceable, strong voice and high profit margin labels, and will also make the cloud never achieve high growth, high profitability, and high stability of the second curve.
In the past, the cloud has accumulated certain results in Tier3 and Tier2, such as cross-mirror tracking that has repeatedly broken world records and privacy computing has become the industry standard setter, and it is a matter of course to strengthen the construction of Tier1 in the future. The focus is on improving the quality of the solution through Tier1 and Al Genie products (OEMs). The core base for achieving this is the cloud-derived human-machine collaborative operating system CWOS.
The main business of Cloudcong Technology is "Artificial Intelligence Solutions" and "Human-Machine Collaborative Operating System". It is worth noting that the proportion of human-machine collaborative operating system revenue to main business revenue has increased from 6.41% in 2018 to 31.5% in 2021.
As an important development direction of artificial intelligence, human-machine collaboration has received attention from the state. On March 19, 2019, the seventh meeting of the Central Committee for Comprehensively Deepening Reform pointed out: "Build an intelligent economic form of data-driven, human-machine collaboration, cross-border integration, and co-creation and analysis." ”
According to the description of Yuncong, the human-machine collaborative operating system can realize the engineering and modularization of technology and applications, which is convenient for the rapid customization and application of different scenarios.
Lv Junkuan, senior research director of Gartner, believes that the core of two major trends makes AI gradually move towards the industry: one is that AI can reduce the threshold of industrial use in the form of large-scale production, so that the cost of technology is acceptable, that is, "AI democratization"; second, AI can be integrated with specific industrial scenarios to achieve reliable, visible and credible benign benefits, that is, "AI engineering".
Yuncong calls this approach "AI engineering."
The new infrastructure project is undoubtedly the forefront of the cloud to polish its own "weapons", and then through the tested city-level "big killer" to reduce the dimension to attack other non-new infrastructure industries and long-tail industries.
Behind a series of scientific and technological achievements, is the high R & D investment of Yuncong Technology, and at present, under the leadership of founder Zhou Xi, Yuncong Technology has established a mature R&D team. As of the end of the reporting period, the company has more than 600 R&D personnel, of which 40.17% have a master's degree or above, and 51.34% of R&D personnel.
From 2018 to 2020, yuncong's research and development expenses from science and technology were 148 million yuan, 454 million yuan and 578 million yuan, accounting for 30.61%, 56.25% and 76.59% of the operating income of each period, respectively. High R&D investment makes its technical products form a high industry competition barrier in R&D and innovation. Yuncong Technology said that in the future, it will continue to increase investment in research and development, strengthen technology research and development and innovation, and enhance the company's competitiveness.
The business has been applied in many fields, and Cloud from Technology said that it may be profitable in 2025
AI companies are generally caught in the strange circle of losses, at present, this situation is also the core pain point of AI companies widely criticized by the public, who can quickly have the ability to realize commercial realization and then achieve profitability, has become a hot topic of widespread concern inside and outside the industry.
The cloud goes deep into B-end and G-end customers from technology, adopts the model of holding high and hitting high to open up the market, radiates down from the top level of head customers, and takes the government and important industry head enterprise customers as the main battlefield. At present, related products and services have covered government departments, large central enterprises and large banks, etc., and the customer stickiness is large in the medium and long term.
In terms of business layout, through years of technology accumulation and deep business cultivation, Cloudcong has gradually realized mature applications in many fields such as smart finance, smart governance, smart travel, smart business, and smart city.
Among them, the smart finance field has covered more than 100 financial institutions including six state-owned banks, the smart governance field has served 30 provincial-level administrative regions across the country, such as political science and law, schools, scenic spots and other multi-type application scenarios, the smart travel field has been deployed in hundreds of civil hub airports including China's top ten airports, and the smart city field has been built in Guangzhou, Sichuan, Hunan and other places to build "digital base" benchmarking projects.
Regarding the future profitability, Yuncong Technology said in its reply to the inquiry that according to estimates, its revenue scale in 2022-2025 will be 1.682 billion yuan, 2.501 billion yuan, 3.227 billion yuan and 4.011 billion yuan, respectively, and the comprehensive gross profit margin level will remain at about 50%.
Cloud from Technology said that it may achieve profitability in 2025. It is also the only ai innovator among the current companies that has responded positively to profitability and said that it can achieve profitability.
It is worth noting that Yuncong Technology was included in the "Entity List" and the "China Military-Industrial Complex List" by the US Department of Commerce and the Treasury Department in 2018 and 2021 respectively.
Shen Meng, executive director of Chanson Capital, said that at present, AI companies are facing two kinds of losses, "If AI companies are only doing system integration projects and losing money, then this loss is a long-term loss, and there will be no room for performance reversal, then this loss is negative for the prospects of listed companies; but if AI companies are losing money for the research and development of core technologies, once their technologies are promoted on a large scale in the future, performance reversals may occur soon." ”