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After releasing the large model "Serial Monkey", Mobvoi submitted the application form for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
This AI company, which has done smart watches, smart headphones, smart speakers, etc., has also experienced large-scale expansion and personnel business contraction, and under the boom of the ChatGPT concept, it is trying to turn over the waves of the capital market.
According to the prospectus, its business has undergone major changes in recent years, with the proportion of AI software solution revenue rising from 17% in 2020 to 60.6%, while the company achieved a turnaround in 2022. However, the reporter found that the large customers of Mobvoi in recent years have been changing every year, and the proportion of single customer revenue is gradually increasing, and the revenue of a single customer will account for more than 40% in 2022.
Li Zhifei is the largest individual shareholder, and his business strategy has been constantly changing
In 2012, Li Zhifei returned to China from Google in the United States to start a business and set up an artificial intelligence technology company. According to its official website information, Dr. Li Zhifei graduated from the Department of Computer Science of Johns Hopkins University in the United States, and was a scientist at Google's US headquarters and an expert in machine learning and machine translation.
According to the prospectus, Mobvoi's single largest shareholder group, namely Li Zhifei, Li Yuanyuan and Dr. Lei, and their respective wholly-owned investment holding companies (Mobvoi Limited, CMWWLimited and Amberlei Limited) are a group of persons and entities acting in concert. As at the Latest Practicable Date, the single largest shareholder group jointly owns 32.74% of the total issued share capital of the Company, with the above three directly holding 26.72%, 3.02% and 3% respectively. In addition, SIG Haina Asia is the largest institutional shareholder of Mobvoi, holding 17.03%; Secondly, Google holds 13.26%, Sequoia holds 10.92%, and Goertek holds 10.03%.
According to the prospectus, the last round of financing stopped in September 2019.
In 2019, Bloomberg quoted people familiar with the matter as seeking to raise $100 million and planned to list on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. At that time, Mobvoi responded to the listing of the Science and Technology Innovation Board, saying that "we are interested and have plans". In the following four years, there was no substantial progress in the listing action.
In addition, Mobvoi's product strategy is constantly adjusted. In June 2015, Mobvoi released its first smartwatch, TicWatch. Subsequently, it has successively launched mobile App, AI smart watch TicWatch series, AI true wireless smart headphones TicPods series, smart rearview mirror TicMirror, smart speaker TicKasa series and other artificial intelligence software and hardware products.
Before 2018, Mobvoi set the direction of the company's exploration as "soft and hard combination" and "AI + wearable".
Subsequently, the company opened ToC and ToB two-wheel drive, and proposed an international strategy to become a global brand of AI wearables; It has created a new retail strategy that integrates online and offline. In addition to smart watches, smart speakers and smart headphones, in the face of the enterprise-level market, Mobvoi also released the first mass-produced AI voice chip module "Qianxin".
Until 2019, Mobvoi business was cold, and all businesses except the two product lines of smart watches and smart cars were stopped, and all 20 offline stores were also closed. As a result, the size of the company's employees has shrunk significantly, directly halving from 1,000 people.
With the fire of AIGC technology trends, it seems to have captured a new excitement.
"The emergence of OpenAI's GPT-3 in 2020 brought about great changes in the industry, which directly promoted the transformation of my beliefs, made me see the possibility of AGI (General Artificial Intelligence) realization, and I also rekindled my interest in exploring AGI." Li Zhifei said in an interview with China Entrepreneur magazine.
Now, in the updated official website of Mobvoi, it positions itself as an artificial intelligence company with generative AI and voice interaction as the core, and is committed to creating a general large model.
In 2022, the net profit will exceed 100 million yuan, turning losses into profits
The official website information is clear, Mobvoi has AI infrastructure capabilities, cutting-edge general large model capabilities (self-developed large model "sequence monkey"), and optimization algorithm technology modules that combine software and hardware in vertical fields, and is a company that serves three different groups of consumers, enterprises and creators at the same time.
With the change of business, Mobvoi's revenue has increased significantly, and the prospectus shows that the revenue of Mobvoi in 2020-2022 will be 264.5 million yuan, 397.9 million yuan and 500.2 million yuan, respectively; The adjusted net profit was -157 million yuan, -73.4 million yuan and 108.9 million yuan, respectively.
From its revenue composition, it can be seen that Mobvoi's AI software solution revenue continues to grow, with the proportion of revenue rising from 17% in 2020 to 60.6% in 2022, and in 2022, this business revenue growth rate will reach 408.89%. The company said its revenue growth was broadly in line with growth in AI software solutions.
Mobvoi explained the specific reasons for the growth of AI software solutions in the prospectus: the increase in revenue of AIGC solutions was due to the increase in paying users of AIGC solutions; The increase in revenue from AI Enterprise Solutions was primarily due to intellectual property arrangements.
However, with the increase in revenue, Mobvoi also incurred a loss in continuing operations. In 2020, the company recorded a profit of $90.473 million from continuing operations, while in 2021 and 2022, it recorded losses of $182 million and $685 million from continuing operations respectively.
From 2020 to 2022, Mobvoi's R&D expenditure was 97.093 million yuan, 91.505 million yuan and 119 million yuan respectively. Ask the door to make it clear that it needs to enhance the competitiveness of the solution in the market. As a result, significant investments in R&D are expected to continue.
In this regard, the CEO of an AI company told reporters that at present, whether it is AI or specific to the AIGC field, it is still in a loss state for the entire industry, and only some head giants and head innovative companies have achieved profits, and the investment period of the entire AIGC field will last for a period of time.
The head customer changes every year, and the single customer is heavily dependent on revenue
Mobvoi's current customers mainly include: content creators who purchase AIGC solutions; Businesses to which they sell AI enterprise solutions; Consumers who purchase AIoT smart devices; and online and offline distributors to whom AIoT smart devices are sold.
It is worth noting that Mobvoi's dependence on large customers is increasing significantly. From 2020 to 2022, Mobvoi's revenue from the top five customers accounted for 22.4%, 37% and 62.8% of our revenue, respectively.
According to the prospectus data, since 2020, Mobvoi has provided services to more than 10 million users around the world, covering content creators, enterprises and consumers. In scenarios related to content creators, it has attracted more than 6 million cumulative registered users of AIGC solutions worldwide. In enterprise-related scenarios, more than 2 million vehicles are pre-installed with their in-vehicle voice interaction solutions. In consumer-related scenarios, its AIoT smart devices have sold more than 1 million units.
Mobvoi said that its performance may be affected by a number of factors, most of which are beyond its control. These factors include: failure to maintain business relationships with key customers, retain existing customers and attract new customers; changes in China's overall economic and social conditions; changes in consumer preferences and behaviour; the evolution of policies and regulations in China, particularly with regard to recent developments in AIGC services and other AI products; and changes in the macroeconomic environment.
The reporter found that the large customers of Mobvoi in recent years have been changing every year, and the proportion of single customer revenue is gradually increasing.
In 2021, customer B, as the customer with the largest proportion of Mobvoi revenue, contributed 24.1% of revenue, 20 percentage points higher than the second-ranked customer.
At the same time, the prospectus specifically pointed out that in 2022, the revenue generated by the company and the largest customer, automotive subsidiary A, will be 213 million yuan, accounting for 42.06% of the total annual revenue, which is nearly 30 percentage points higher than the second-ranked customer; In 2021, the figures were $3.2 million and 0.8% respectively.
Fierce battle for big models
On April 20, Mobvoi announced that the internal beta exploration of the large model "Sequence Monkey", based on the "Sequence Monkey" large model, the company explored a variety of AIGC products and applications for creators, and built a one-stop CoPilot product matrix for creators, including the AI writing platform "Wonderful Text", the AI painting platform "Yanzhi Painting", the AI dubbing platform "Magic Sound Workshop", and the digital human video and live broadcast platform "Wonderful Yuan".
According to the official introduction, "Sequence Monkey" is a large language model with multimodal generation capabilities, the ability system includes six dimensions of knowledge, mathematics, dialogue, logic, reasoning and planning, and can support the generation of text, pictures, speech and 3D content.
However, Li Zhifei also admitted that there is still a significant gap between the "sequence monkey" and GPT-4, if GPT-4 can get 100 points, then the "sequence monkey" will only have 50 points. However, he also said that the model has exceeded expectations.
However, the "sequence monkey" is bound to face the same giant competition as products such as smart speakers that went out to ask the time.
Under the boom of the concept of ChatGPT, not only foreign technology giants, but also domestic Internet giants have launched their own large models. After Baidu released Wen Xin's words in March, Alibaba launched Tongyi Qianwen, Huawei released Pangu NLP model, Tencent launched Mixed Yuan, and SenseTime released daily renewal, not only that, domestic AI innovative enterprises have also successively laid out large models, and the field is blooming.
Mobvoi also admitted in the prospectus that the AI industry in which it operates is highly competitive, mainly competing with companies that focus on AI technology development, and increased competition may lead to slower business growth, lower prices, lower profit margins or loss of market share.
Zhang Shule, an industry critic, believes that large factories that have been laid out in artificial intelligence for many years and have considerable experience have formed a leading advantage in the construction and structure of large model platforms. Innovative and entrepreneurial enterprises can make breakthroughs in the application of large models, cultivate vertically on more application collection tracks, and explore their own commercialization road.