Whether it is life, work or hobbies, Starry Sky Jun has become highly dependent on AI.
Regarding AI, Starry Sky Jun briefly talked about a few views: First, AI will greatly improve productivity and become an important part of the new industrial revolution; Second, although China's AI technology lags behind the United States, it is still second in the world and far ahead of third; Third, large models such as Wen Xin Yiyan, Tongyi Qianwen, and Xunfei Xinghuo can definitely be self-developed, not open source version magic modification, but it is likely to use the ChatGPT interface for training and optimize the quality of dialogue.
In terms of the underlying algorithm, the large model is not mysterious, and OpenAI has the meaning of "making a miracle". When it sets the direction, and Chinese companies follow the established direction, it is very simple.
Recently, Wuxi Liangxi Talent Group recently signed a cooperation agreement with Baidu to jointly build Baidu Intelligent Cloud Wenxin Qianfan Model (Wuxi) Innovation Center, which is the first regional privatization deployment of Wenxin Qianfan Model Platform in China.
What is privatization deployment?
As a simple example, when we talk to AI, the questions we ask are recorded in the cloud.
If you enter papers, materials or even corporate secrets, there is a risk of leakage. In order to prevent the leakage of trade secrets, international companies such as Samsung have banned employees from using ChatGPT.
Installing AI servers on their own servers (or private clouds) is a private deployment. Starry Sky Jun is trying to localize the open source version of ChatGLM and have a lot of fun.
Moreover, localized deployment can also access its own data to form a "digital human".
First, who is most closely following the concept of AI?
In addition to Ali, Baidu, 360, iFLYTEK, and Kunlun Wanwei opening up their own large models, many listed companies claim to be inextricably linked with large models.
It should be emphasized that the algorithm of large models is not complicated, but it is necessary to have enough accumulation, and at the same time there must be enough graphics cards. Especially after the United States cut off the supply of high-end computing graphics cards such as A100 to China, many companies did not have hardware conditions.
iSoftStone also claims to be a company closely related to the big model.
Source: Flush iFind, Cartography: Poetry and Starfield
According to the 2022 annual report, the company achieved operating income of 19.103 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of 14.92% over the same period of the previous year, a net profit attributable to the parent of 973 million yuan, an increase of 3.02% over the same period of the previous year, and a non-net profit of 838 million yuan, down 3.51% from the same period of the previous year.
According to the first quarterly report of 2023, the company achieved operating income of 4.203 billion yuan, down 3.97% from the same period of the previous year, net profit attributable to the parent of 61 million yuan, down 36.42% from the same period of the previous year, and non-net profit of 36 million yuan, down 53.93% from the same period of the previous year.
Not only are the annual reports not good-looking, but the quarterly reports are not good-looking. In terms of performance, the company is in a downward channel.
In terms of large-model cooperation, the company said that it is the earliest access application developer of Microsoft's large model, an ecological partner of Baidu Wenxin Yiyan, Wenxin Qianfan large model platform and Alitongyi Qianwen, and an artificial intelligence framework based on the large model of a large communication equipment enterprise (most likely Huawei?). ), covering its own business scope to the field of AI computing resources to the AI development platform layer.
Sounds tough, but what about the actual situation?
Microsoft's large model should refer to ChatGPT, commercial APIs are public, and tens of millions of enterprises are connected; Wen Xin Yiyan, Wen Xin Qianfan, and Tongyi Qianwen's partners are also hundreds of thousands; Huawei's Pangu model is also open to the industry.
In other words, as long as there are similar IT companies in the market, there is a high probability that they can access these large models.
Second, the surface partner, in fact, the outsourcing of manpower
During the reporting period, iSoftStone further improved the breadth and depth of cooperation with communication equipment industry customers and its major ecological companies, and grew into a supplier with comprehensive service capabilities such as consulting and solutions, product research and development, IT implementation, operation and maintenance operations, etc., and deeply participated in the construction of ecological fields such as cloud, Hongmeng, Euler, Kunpeng, and digital energy.
Xingkong Jun is very puzzled, you have told Hongmeng, are you embarrassed to mention the name of a large communication equipment enterprise?
Is this really the case?
Starry Sky Jun checked the company's employees.
First of all, the number of employees is very staggering, close to 100,000 people. You know, Ali is only 230,000 employees, iSoftStone's number of employees is enough to support a giant high-tech company.
Source: Flush iFind, Cartography: Poetry and Starfield
What about employees' income?
Source: Flush iFind, Cartography: Poetry and Starfield
The cash flow statement shows that 16.5 billion yuan of cash was paid to employees in 2022, and the per capita income of employees was around 200,000.
But the figure of 16.5 billion is somewhat frightening: the company's revenue in the same period is only 19.1 billion. The company's R&D expenses in 2022 will only be 1.05 billion yuan (including 940 million yuan in R&D personnel salaries).
This means that the vast majority of a company's costs are employee salaries.
What does it mean for an IT company to put a large number of employee salaries not into R&D expenses, but into operating costs?
The company's core business is actually manpower outsourcing.
In the list of R&D expenses of the company, the first project is related to manpower outsourcing: the talent online supply platform upgrade project.
Third, look at the gross profit margin
After understanding the company's true core business, the gross margin of the sub-business lines is easy to understand.
No matter what the industry, the gross profit margin is mostly around 20%, in fact, the main reason is that the company is engaged in human outsourcing, rather than selling self-developed technology (and some project outsourcing, similar to human outsourcing).
Source: Flush iFind, Cartography: Poetry and Starfield
For Party A (Tencent Ali and other giants), manpower outsourcing can effectively save human resources, as long as iSoftStone such enterprises customize talent standards on demand, return the manpower after the project construction is completed, and the manpower outsourcing company will then promote these people to other companies...
For business employees, the risk of not finding a better job increases as they age.
It can also be clearly seen from the changes in the company's personnel that the pressure in the industry is relatively large, and the number of manpower outsourcing has declined significantly.
In addition to manpower outsourcing as its main business, the company still has some independent core technologies. According to the company's 2022 annual report, in addition to the online human resources supply platform, it mainly includes the construction of some information system platforms in finance, insurance and other industries.