Interview With Chen Ning, Chairman Of Yuntian Lifei: Promoting The Company To Meet The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Editor's note

From November 17, a series of reports on the growth of Guangdong and Macao enterprises was launched. The series of reports were jointly planned and implemented by the headquarters of Guangdong Hong Kong Macao big bay district of China Central Radio and television, the center of Guangdong Hong Kong Macao big bay area and the southern finance and economics Omnimedia group.

This series of reports focuses on the high growth enterprises in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. Through in-depth first-line interviews and field research, we try to present the group stories of "Gazelle" enterprises active in the strategic emerging industries in Dawan District, excavate the explorations, discoveries and efforts of Dawan entrepreneurs in their respective industries, as well as their struggle, choice and thinking.

Today, issue 6, we will focus on the AI industry. In recent years, the concept of AI is hot, and there are only one direction of computer vision. At present, there are nearly 10000 existing enterprises. Yuntian lifeI, which is currently in the process of IPO, is undoubtedly one of the benchmarks. How is its business model chosen? What are the unique features? Gazelle report team for your in-depth analysis. (Cao Jinliang)

Shenzhen returnees' entrepreneurial stories are not uncommon, and yuntianlifei is a benchmark. Chen Ning, chairman and CEO of the company, is the designer of China's first commercial vector processor chip, doctor of Georgia Institute of technology, and former senior architect of Freescale Semiconductor and chief representative of 4g-lte international standards.

In the rolling tide of AI in 2014, Chen Ning led the founding team back to Shenzhen without hesitation and established Yuntian lifeI, focusing on the research and development of visual artificial intelligence technology. Chen Ning told reporters: "our founding teams are actually engineers. We have worked for 5-10 years after graduation from the United States. We hope that new application scenarios of AI technology can be implemented." Subsequently, this team of engineers aimed at the security industry as an entry point to grow into an integrated solution provider for digital city.

Looking back on the six-year entrepreneurial road, Chen Ning divides it into three development stages: "the first stage is more about the R & D, precipitation and polishing of the technology platform. From 2014 to 2016, we consolidated the underlying algorithm platform and big data platform, especially the chip platform. At that time, the first generation of neural network processor was put into research and development, until 2018, 22 Nano second generation neural network processor has been successfully taped

In the first stage, Yuntian lifeI won the first place in the competition team of a high-tech talent introduction project in Shenzhen, and the dynamic portrait recognition system "Shenmu" began to land in Longgang District of Shenzhen, making a figure in the police scene.

"From 2017 to 2019, we have entered the stage of product landing, scene development and market development. Facing various scenarios, we have gradually enriched solutions. We have launched a city level dynamic portrait system and constantly enriched it. We have developed various applications for various police types of public security, and expanded from police to smart community governance, park management, and business fields Scenery. " Chen Ning told reporters.

On the one hand, "Shenmu" helped to crack down on the case, and "Shenmu" quickly landed in most areas of Shenzhen, more than 20 cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and many countries in Southeast Asia. On the other hand, Yuntian lifeI's solutions have expanded from public safety to urban governance and new business.

In Chen Ning's opinion, after 2019, Yuntian lifeI has entered the third stage, that is, the stage of rapid development. "We have the ability to rapidly develop urban level solutions. This year, we have developed a set of city level epidemic monitoring and big data analysis platform. If in 2015 and 2016, we may need a year and a half to complete, but today we have a set of urban level solutions The system can be developed in less than two months. "

By 2020, Yuntian lifeI has accelerated its development, completed more than 2 billion yuan of financing in the first half of the year, and entered the listing guidance period. Chen Ning was selected as "40 people in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in 40 years". Chen Ning also said: "I have always felt that our luck is particularly good. Shenzhen is the most suitable city for returnees to start their own businesses. Returnees can quickly integrate into it, and then polish their technology and products. There is no need to worry about everything else. This is the charm of Shenzhen."

The story of entrepreneurship in Shenzhen will continue, and the story of artificial intelligence is still evolving. Chen Ning believes that AI may be able to power things like electricity in 3-5 years and sneak into every industry silently. The next ten years will be the key period of the fourth industrial revolution.

Start in Shenzhen: "making chips is an ascetic thing"

Nanfang finance and Economics: before and after 2014, AI vision start-ups have been emerging. How does Yuntian lifeI form differentiation?

Chen Ning: on the one hand, it is the difference in technology; on the other hand, it is the difference in the selection and positioning of our grinding products.

In terms of technology, we focus on full stack evolution, so we have algorithm team, big data team, and AI chip design team to "Trinity" build core technical barriers. Among them, the ability of "algorithm chip" is a core difference, that is, the whole process of chip design is based on the understanding of machine learning algorithm, extracting common and high-frequency operation types, defining efficient neural network processing instruction set, and then introducing it into our chip design architecture process, thus forming such an algorithm chip based AI chip Design process. Therefore, on our neural network processor, we can efficiently carry our own and third-party machine learning algorithms, providing higher cost performance and more effective computing power.

In terms of product polishing, we pay attention to the industry plus AI, which needs to have a deep understanding of the industry. This is not only to provide a technical means, but also to provide tools to change the industrial workflow, so that users can really use it in the daily work process, and improve the efficiency by dozens or even more than 100 times. This is the solution for AI to empower an industry.

Nanfang finance and Economics: what application scenarios has Yuntian lifeI expanded at present? What are the challenges in landing?

Chen Ning: from the perspective of application scenarios, there are mainly two directions: one is the various scenarios of urban governance in digital cities, and the other is residential life, which mainly refers to some scenarios of enterprise level or even extended to consumer services. For example, in the digital city, there are security, transportation, epidemic prevention systems, and even AI's computing power and algorithm service platform, and a series of solutions will be involved in human settlements, such as smart parks, smart buildings, smart commerce and so on.

In fact, no matter what the scenario is, the biggest challenge for all AI companies is to have a deep understanding of the business flow and requirements of the scenario, as well as the deep integration with algorithms, chips and big data technologies. In this process, it is necessary to have a strong engineering ability to understand the scene, or introduce the industry experts of this scene and AI engineers to deeply integrate to polish the products facing this scene.

Because AI is not a product, it is just a capability, a technology platform. What's more important is to integrate the capability and technology platform into the user's business process to really help him reduce costs or improve efficiency. It is absolutely not the algorithm engineers or software engineers of AI enterprises who imagine a product themselves, but must be grounded.

Nanfang finance and Economics: because visual solutions are usually integrated roles, will there be low gross profit margin industry problems in smart city and other scenarios?

Chen Ning: it is true that in many areas of smart city, there will be relatively low gross profit. But for AI enterprises, I think that in recent years, they are more about seizing the market entry, seizing the entry of these data and applications, because data and application are the core key to push our technology platform and capability platform to continue to iterate and evolve. The scene entrance is very important, it must be large-scale to make profits.

Nanfang finance and Economics: there are many giants in AI field. What is the current market pattern?

If you don't understand the different scenarios of AI, you can't find a solution to the different application scenarios of AI Opportunity and position. On the other hand, with the continuous investment of Internet giants in AI field, and even some open platform practices, I think it is actually a good thing, which can promote the inclusive of AI and bring more increment.

Start listing: meet the fourth industrial revolution

Nanfang finance and Economics: in the past six years from 2014 to now, Yuntian lifeI has entered the IPO guidance period. What are the power sources behind the speed?

Chen Ning: I think many chip or AI companies are embracing the capital market. There are two reasons: on the one hand, the state's policy of encouraging independent scientific and technological innovation, such as the reform of the registration system of the growth enterprise market, has actually opened the door of policy and dividends to all scientific and technological innovation enterprises.

On the other hand, the development and evolution of artificial intelligence is extremely fast. If we do not lead the development of this industry faster, we may be eliminated. Because of the continuous development of technology application demand in this era, 2020-2030 is the most critical decade for the start of the fourth industrial revolution. Therefore, we should speed up our own pace and integrate all resources that can be integrated, such as capital, technological innovation, product market, talents and industry, to promote the company to meet the fourth industrial revolution.

Nanfang finance and Economics: what impact will the listing bring to the company? How to balance the expectation of capital market and the strategic development of the company?

Chen Ning: in fact, the secondary market can use a more flexible and low-cost financing means to help technology companies invest in R & D and market development, which can open a very smooth bridge and channel between capital and hard core technology companies. This is the biggest advantage.

In fact, although there must be a stage of rapid development of corporate governance, there must be a stage of rapid development of corporate governance. Therefore, I believe that this is a very important process to improve the management ability and capital operation ability of the whole company.

《 Nanfang finance and Economics: in 2014 and 2015, entrepreneurship in AI field was very hot, and now it is relatively calm. Some enterprises' valuations have fallen. How do you view this change in the market?

Chen Ning: in fact, when the concept of capital or AI was very hot a few years ago, we didn't feel the heat, nor did we pay much attention to the valuation. In fact, we paid more attention to the landing of products and the construction of core technical barriers, because we know that AI is actually a very long process. In addition, we are artificial intelligence and chips, so we need more long-term investment and are ascetic monks We are ready to fight for a long time.

Nanfang finance and Economics: there are also some doubts about AI industry this year. Will financing be more difficult this year?

Chen Ning: my feeling is different. When the capital market is more rational, I will pay more attention to the accumulation of core technology and the ability of productization and marketization of AI enterprises. Frankly speaking, when AI has been paid more attention to by the capital market in the past few years, our financing has not been successful. On the contrary, when the market is more calm this year, we have been paid attention to by capital, because maybe we pay more attention to the landing of products and the accumulation of core technology. We will see more details.

Nanfang finance and Economics: in the process of communicating with investors, what industry problems do they pay most attention to?

Chen Ning: the capital market now pays more attention to two things. One is the ability of AI's core technology platform, such as the ability of our algorithm chip, the ability of design and the ability of gradual iterative research and development. This ability is very important because it determines the efficiency of your technology evolution and R & D. The second is AI's product empowerment. In the face of whether various industries have the ability to land products, how many industries can you change and what is your market share.