Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Wang Lin
A few days ago, a unicorn in the field of artificial intelligence and an A-share listed company, Geling Shenpu, released a financial report, injecting a shot in the arm into the generally loss-making artificial intelligence industry.
On August 26, Geling Shenpui announced its semi-annual report, with operating income of 157 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34.35%. In the first half of the year, the net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company was 2.1154 million yuan, compared with a net loss of 12.5616 million yuan in the same period of the previous year, turning losses into profits. Deducted non-net profit of 1.11 million yuan, which was also a year-on-year turnaround.
Nowadays, the business model of "selling well or not selling" in the AI industry is no longer attractive, and the profitability of AI companies has become the focus of the market. Last year, Geling Shenpui became the first A-share AI computer vision company to achieve profitability, and from the financial report in the first half of this year, it still maintained solid performance growth.
Source: Visual China
AI computer vision dark horse out of the loss, profit level leading the industry
Founded in 2013, Geling Deep Pupil focuses on the technical and application layers of artificial intelligence, and is one of the earliest computer vision startups in China. Its founder, Yong Zhao, graduated from the Department of Computer Engineering at Brown University in the United States and was one of the first seven people in the Google Smart Glass project.
Due to the strong technical background of the founding team of Geling Deep Vision, it was once known as an AI "genius company", and it received Series A financing from ZhenFund and Ceyuan Venture Capital at the beginning of its establishment, and a year later obtained Series B financing led by Sequoia Capital. In 2022, Geling Deep Pupil was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, becoming the first computer vision listed company in A-shares.
According to the information disclosed in the announcement, from 2020 to 2021, Geling Deep Pupil lost 77.8692 million yuan and 68.4177 million yuan respectively, and the net profit attributable to the parent in 2022 reached 32.6149 million yuan, achieving a turnaround. Among the many AI companies struggling with losses, Geling Deep Pupil has become one of the first to make a profit.
Looking horizontally, Yuncong Technology, one of the "AI Four Tigers", achieved operating income of 526 million yuan in 2022 and a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of -869 million yuan, compared with -632 million yuan in the same period last year. In the first half of 2023, Cloudwalk Technology achieved operating income of 164 million yuan, and the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was -304 million yuan, compared with -325 million yuan in the same period of the previous year.
Another "AI tiger" SenseTime had a total revenue of RMB3.809 billion in 2022, with a loss of RMB6.09 billion, a decrease of 64.5% from the loss of RMB17.177 billion in 2021. In the first half of 2023, SenseTime's revenue was RMB1.433 billion, with a net loss of RMB3.143 billion and an adjusted net loss of RMB2.393 billion, respectively, down 2% and 6.7% from the same period of the previous year.
It can be seen that after years of technical investment and commercial exploration, the overall loss of AI head enterprises is in a narrowing trend, and Geling Deep Pupil is the first to achieve breakeven.
At present, the company's research projects cover computer vision, speech semantics and other multimodal basic algorithms, intelligent hardware technology research and development, smart finance, urban management, commercial retail, rail transit operation and maintenance, sports and health, metaverse products and downstream applications and some forward-looking exploration projects research and development, sufficient technical reserves, providing strong support for the company's products to innovate.
Financial report information shows that in the first half of 2023, the company maintained a good growth momentum, increased delivery and promotion, increased the number of acceptance orders, and finally achieved a year-on-year revenue increase of 34%, and R&D expenses increased by 34.96% to 77.06 million yuan, accounting for 48.95% of operating income.
In other words, while maintaining a healthy level of profitability, the company maintains a high investment in research and development. According to the half-year report, the number of R&D personnel in the company increased from 227 in the same period last year to 321, accounting for 65.38% of the total number of employees. It can be seen that in the overall layoff environment of the industry, Geling Deep Pupil is still absorbing technical talents.
Next, with the research and development and exploration of key technologies of Geling Deep Vision artificial intelligence in more fields such as sports health, rail operation and maintenance, and meta-universe, the company's technology accumulation is also expected to be further strengthened.
Based on superior technology, create standardized landing products
In the first half of this year, the performance of Geling Deep Vision's smart financial business was still bright, and the financial report showed that the business has covered tens of thousands of branches of Agricultural Bank of China in various provinces and cities across the country, including multiple financial business scenarios such as intelligent security, intelligent operation, and intelligent risk control. At the same time, the company participated in the construction of an AI platform for the head office of a state-owned bank, and other branches of state-owned banks also had pilots.
Third-party research reports show that there is still much room for growth in the mainland's smart financial market in the future. According to IDC Consulting, the market size of China's banking IT solutions market in 2022 was 64.88 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.1% compared with 58.93 billion yuan in 2021. It is predicted that by 2027, the size of China's banking IT solutions market will reach 142.915 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 17.1%.
Among them, core business, data intelligence and risk management solutions are still the top three largest sub-markets in China's banking IT solutions market, accounting for 19.7%, 10.4% and 10.3% of the market share, respectively. Under the boom of large models, the development and popularization of vertical large models in the financial field will also drive the growth of the market.
Geling Deep Pupil also has a technical layout and related applications in this field. According to the semi-annual report, in the field of smart finance, the company has built a large model technical architecture for behavior analysis suitable for this field, and has completed scenario testing, technical demonstration and practical application. The company explores and expands multimodal technology on the basis of computer vision, and will integrate self-developed natural language processing and automatic speech recognition technologies in the future to fully empower the application of intelligent scenarios for bank customers.
The company's main business income comes from the four major fields of smart finance, urban management, commercial retail, and rail operation and maintenance, and has carried out forward-looking business layout in the fields of sports and health and metaverse, and some products and solutions have been successfully piloted among customers.
According to public information, the company has mastered the core algorithm technology in the field of computer vision, and has formed five technical directions: model training and data production technology based on deep learning, 3D stereoscopic vision technology, automated traffic scene perception and event recognition technology, large-scale cross-mirror tracking technology and robot perception and control technology, and has a number of independent intellectual property rights; The company's core algorithms such as face recognition and vehicle recognition have been ranked among the best in algorithm competitions held by international and domestic authorities and organizations.
The above advantageous technologies can be explored in many fields and standardized products based on this, thus forming technical barriers and commercial moats.
For example, Geling Deep Pupil "housekeeping skills" 3D stereo vision technology, in the field of sports, the application of 3D stereo vision technology can carry out more accurate and fine 3D modeling and analysis of movement behavior, and output three-dimensional key points and action behavior data of the human body far better than the current level; Create landable artificial intelligence products and solutions for a variety of sports and health sports scenarios.
Specifically, the technology can evaluate whether the user's actions are completed and the degree of standard, and carry out sports counting, timing, ranging, similarity evaluation, etc. In this regard, Geling Deep Vision has developed three-dimensional sports interactive products and multi-eye collaborative solutions for a variety of sports scenes, which can support 100+ sports training and examination items, and has the characteristics of high accuracy of visual algorithms and accurate evaluation of sports posture.
Based on this technical solution, Geling Deep Pupil has created a series of smart campus sports products. At present, the product has been piloted in many campuses across the country, providing daily teaching support and examination services for more than 20,000 students and teachers.
Last year, a middle school in Beijing realized the intelligence of the school's full-scene sports space by introducing the Geling Deep Pupil Smart Campus Sports Solution. It is reported that in May this year, Geling Deep Pupil's self-developed Deep Pupil A Pupil series products have successfully served a middle school entrance examination physical education test center in Beijing, through AI real-time research and judgment function and big data analysis platform, accurately capture and analyze student movements, realize scientific examination assistance, and greatly improve the efficiency of physical education assessment.
According to iResearch, by 2025, the market size of China's intelligent sports and fitness industry is expected to reach 82 billion yuan. This market cake with considerable growth potential will also become a battleground for AI companies in the future.
Aim at the metaverse and open up a new battlefield to C
The AI revolution driven by large models such as the ChatGPT series is sweeping all walks of life. In all verticals, the metaverse based on AR/VR technology will be deeply influenced by AIGC.
The advantageous technology of Geling Deep Pupil has also landed in the solution of the metaverse field.
Its self-developed large-scale immersive human-computer interaction system is composed of computing unit, sensing unit, AI algorithm, application software, etc., which has the characteristics of spatial immersion, real-person interaction and rich human-computer interaction methods, and can provide human action posture perception and six-degree-of-freedom equipment perception in large scenes.
It is worth mentioning that this is the first attempt of Geling Deep Pupil to face the To C market, which is expected to open up the situation in the C-end market. It can be seen that as a leading AI vision enterprise in China, Geling Deep Pupil has made a lot of efforts in application innovation based on its own differentiated technology advantages.
Geling Deep Pupil Metaverse field sports game application case
A new round of AI wave has arrived, as an early player, Geling Deep Pupil has accumulated a certain first-mover advantage in data and algorithms, and with the company's entry into independent controllable multimodal large models and new complex AIGC systems, its advantageous technologies will naturally have greater commercial imagination.
In the future, whether it is traditional industries such as finance and city management, or innovation tracks such as sports and metaverse on the eve of the outbreak, AI will become the most widely used technical infrastructure. The profitability of AI companies will be just the beginning.