This newspaper comprehensive report artificial intelligence hard technology IPO is coming.
At the critical time of the IPO of artificial intelligence companies, the high-profile cloud from technology recently officially obtained the registration application of the Securities Regulatory Commission, becoming the "first stock of the AI platform" of the science and technology innovation board. This news has brought great confidence to the AI track IPO, and after successfully passing the listing committee review in July 2021, AI unicorn cloud has once again stood in the spotlight from technology.
So, what advantages does the cloud have gained from technology to "the first share of AI platform"? What are the development dilemmas behind the listing? What is the environment of the AI industry?
What does the cloud rely on from technology?
Yuncong Technology, born in the Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is known as the "national team" in the field of artificial intelligence, and is the first artificial intelligence enterprise to undertake the construction of three major national platforms at the same time and participate in the formulation of national and industry standards. As the head enterprise of the mainland artificial intelligence industry chain, Yuncong Technology is praised by the market as "one of the four little dragons of AI". According to the data, cloud technology from the establishment of technology in March 2015, to the present has carried out 7 rounds of financing, of which the most recent round of financing scale reached 1.8 billion yuan. Since its inception, the company has focused on smart finance, smart governance, smart travel, smart city and other fields, and gradually expanded to digital new infrastructure and pan-AI industry, boosting the process of artificial intelligence industrialization and the intelligent transformation and upgrading of various industries.
In the case of increasing competition in artificial intelligence enterprises, Cloud has continuously deepened its cultivation in the field of software and hardware product research and development and core algorithms from technology, not only has the core technology of artificial intelligence that is independently controllable and constantly innovating, but also covers the entire field of image recognition, speech recognition, natural language processing and machine learning in the technical direction, and has built a technical closed loop from perception to cognition to decision-making.
According to the prospectus, Yuncong Technology has 316 patents (133 of which are invention patents), 354 software copyrights and other intellectual property rights in the field of artificial intelligence. The company's independent research and development of cross-border tracking, 3D structured light face recognition, double-layer heterogeneous deep neural network and adversarial neural network and other technologies are at the leading level in the industry. The company was also invited to participate in the formulation of 30 national and industry standards such as national standards for artificial intelligence and industry standards for the Ministry of Public Security.
In terms of industry landing, the cloud has gradually been applied and matured in many fields such as finance, transportation, commerce, and urban management. Among them, the smart finance field covers 100 financial institutions, including six state-owned banks, the smart governance field serves the political and legal, school, scenic spots and other multi-type application scenarios of 30 provincial-level administrative regions across the country, the smart travel field has been deployed in hundreds of civil hub airports, including Ten large airports in China, and the smart city is building "digital base" benchmarking projects in Guangzhou, Sichuan, Hunan and other places.
As the exclusive sponsor of the listing of CloudCong Technology, CITIC Construction Investment said that the approval of the IPO of Cloudcong Technology also benefited from the institutional innovation of the registration system of the Science and Technology Innovation Board. The review concept and hard technology positioning of the science and technology innovation board have consolidated the company's understanding of the capital market and boosted the determination and confidence of enterprises to list on the science and technology innovation board.
The road to listing has been tossed and turned
Cloud From Technology and Megvii Technology, Yitu Technology and SenseTime Technology are called AI "Four Little Dragons", although the name of AI "Four Little Dragons" is loud enough, but the road to listing is a twist and turn: before passing the listing committee review, Cloud From Technology experienced two rounds of inquiries, and the review was suspended for a time.
The other side of the road to the listing of AI "Four Little Dragons" is that AI companies generally have a situation of "high valuation, high research and development, and high loss", and they are also facing the dilemma of less than expected technology and product commercialization. The inability of revenue scale and enterprise valuation to match has become the main reason for the difficulty of AI companies listing.
Why are AI companies obsessed with going public? Industry practitioners said that AI companies have a high investment in research and development, if they have not been able to go public, coupled with the financial pressure brought about by continuous losses, once investors lose confidence, then AI companies will face the risk of global collapse, full of losses, no winners.
In fact, alleviating financial pressure is also one of the purposes of cloud from technology to seek listing. In the prospectus submitted by Yuncong Technology to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, it elaborated on the main purposes of the funds raised: it intends to raise 3.75 billion yuan, plans to invest 810 million yuan in the human-machine collaborative operating system upgrade project, 830 million yuan in the qingzhou system ecological construction project, 1.41 billion yuan in the artificial intelligence solution integrated service ecological project, and 690 million yuan in supplementary working capital.
AI track IPO crowds are competing
In 2019, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held the ninth collective study on the status quo and trend of artificial intelligence development and emphasized: "Artificial intelligence is a strategic technology leading this round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change, with a 'head goose' effect with strong spillover driving force."
In China, the AI industry is also rising rapidly. According to CCID Consulting data, it is expected that the market size of artificial intelligence-driven industry application integrated solution services will reach 1.7 trillion yuan in 2022. Globally, more than 30 countries have introduced strategies to support the development of the AI industry at the policy level.
However, capital has already sniffed the future prospects of this industry. The AI industry has flourished in the past few years, ushering in a frenzied influx of capital from all walks of life. However, this is the case with any industry, and after experiencing barbaric growth, it is the survival of the fittest.
In fact, countries have basically reached a consensus on the development prospects of the AI industry, that is, who can master this industry will be better in the next international competition. According to a research report by the Institute of Policy and Economics of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, as of December 2020, 39 countries and regions around the world have formulated AI strategic policies and industrial planning documents.
The AI industry is different from other industries, and this industry has had the nature of international competition since the day it was born. According to research data from the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications Technology, as of November 2020, there were a total of 5896 artificial intelligence companies in the world, of which 2257 in the United States, 1454 in China, 430 in the United Kingdom, and 307 in Canada ranked in the top four. From the perspective of enterprise structure, among the global enterprises focusing on artificial intelligence products, intelligent robot enterprises account for the highest proportion, reaching 39%.
When the AI track emerged a few years ago, due to the high threshold of technology and its high-tech attributes, it was also supported by national policies, and investment institutions flocked to it. However, with the market's familiarity with technical theory and the difficulty of realizing it over the years, the grand situation of "no VC and no investment in AI" is quietly passing, and investors' investment enthusiasm for the AI track has shifted from fanaticism to rationality.
Throughout the industry, in the internal and external troubles, the four little dragons are paying for the loss of technology, and at present, only Yuncong Technology has given a forecast of profitability in 2025. Expert analysis said that the dawn of the AI industry is not far away, but the capital market is in a big wave, and only by forming its own competitive advantage and having continuous hematopoietic ability can it withstand this winter.