Giant's own frequent layout of artificial intelligence at the same time, quite powerful start-up companies are also favored by the capital.
Recently, China's artificial intelligence company Kuangshi Technology Face ++ announced the formal completion of C 460,000,000 US dollars financing to break the international record of artificial intelligence in the field of financing It is understood that this round of financing by the C1, C2 two rounds of China's state-owned capital venture capital Fund (referred to as 'Guofutou') lead investment, ant gold clothes, Foxconn Group also conducted a strategic investment.
Kuang as founder and CEO of India as odd science and technology said the financing started in the end of 2016. As Kuang as technology and many business operations related to national strategies, hoping to get the relevant support, so this financing led investor side for the venture capital. GoldenFox and Foxconn Group strategic investment, Inch said, 'Financial services in the financial innovation, Foxconn is the most cattle in the hardware company, Foxconn has a deep ecological chain, including mobile phones, sensors and so on.'
At the same time, regarding the use of this round of financing, Indochina said funds will be used in AI algorithms, computing power and data input. 'Face ++ This year's commercialization has progressed smoothly, C round of 460 million US dollars of financing is not used in its own More work on scale-up and reproduction. "Inch points out that 'in concrete terms, algorithms, data, and calculations, all three require more capital investment.'
Face recognition giants
Data show that Kuang as technology was founded in 2011, has been invested by Lenovo Venture Capital and Innovation Factory.At present, the company relies on the original deep learning engine MegBrain artificial intelligence technology engineering, product and industrialization in 2017 MS COCO , Places Two of the world's top competitions, Kuangshe technology's core technology beat Google, Microsoft, Facebook, becoming the first Chinese company to win a number of titles.
In terms of industrial development, Kuangsui focuses on the three major areas of financial security, urban brain and mobile smart, and has completed the world-class debut of several artificial intelligence products including 'Brush Face Payment' and 'City Eye' In the field of security, Kuangshi Technology currently provides the largest third-party domestic authentication platform for authenticating users in real names, registrations, large-amount transfers, etc. In the urban brain, the technology of Kuangsi's technology is used in traffic flow identification, public security, Intelligent buildings and intelligent retail.Such smart phones, Kuang as technology mainly to help mobile phone manufacturers to confirm the identity of the user in the era of full screen, now has cooperation with the millet phone.
According to Kuang Shi said science and technology, after the completion of this round of financing, the company will further strengthen its position in the field of financial security, urban security, and speed up the city in the city of integrated brain and mobile smart technology in the field so far, Kuang as technology has been More than a dozen provincial capital cities to achieve strategic cooperation in smart city, and with a number of domestic first-line handset manufacturers in the intelligence reached a depth of cooperation.
'Our input is divided into front and back,' In the introduction of Kuangsheng technology round of financing purposes, Inch said that 'the back line that is the field of R & D, which is no longer a simple recruitment of more researchers, but the infrastructure Investment, including supercomputer cluster, system construction.The front line is financial security, urban brain, mobile smart areas, these industries are not suitable for single point of breakthrough, the need for products, solutions, pre-sales, sales and other aspects of all inputs '
This also means that the future of science and technology will increase investment in the three major aspects of the algorithm, data and computing power.Currently, Kuang as technology has set up a research institute in Seattle, from the talent competition to enhance the ability of the algorithm, but also emphasizes the business Own data backflow and expand the scale of data acquisition and labeling.Looking power, Kuang as technology has set up several supercomputer centers in the country, but still need continuous investment.
Inch believes that the first stage of the supercomputer center is a machine learning training center similar to the factory of new technology, but in the second stage, the supercenter will be extremely popular in the city and become the city's infrastructure.
'As far as I know, Kuangsheng technology is the top technology strength in the field of visual identity is China, R & D strength is also strong.' CCID Consulting, senior analyst in the electronic information industry Xiangyang told 21st Century Business Herald reporter, 'In addition , Kuang as technology and Alibaba have a deep binding, in addition to many of the technologies in Alibaba products to be achieved, the Ant clothes also participated in the strategic investment, so the expansion of the road is still very wide.
AI contest
Kuang as technology science and technology to obtain huge amounts of financing is only the tip of the iceberg of the industry.This year, in the artificial intelligence industry hot background, many start-up companies also received financing.
May 15, according to plans to get a total of about 3.8 billion C-round financing, July 11, Shang Tang Technology harvest of about 2.72 billion yuan B round of financing, on September 18, the Galaxy drops 60 million yuan angel In the first ten days of this month, Zhongtitetuo announced that it will receive tens of millions of Pre-A round financing.'For the current artificial intelligence industry, capital-driven is certainly indispensable, 'said Xiangyang.
In sunny view, currently in the field of security, Kuang as technology is still smaller, the main business is still concentrated in such traditional Hikvision security companies. 'Hikvision as operating longer, more channel layout However, it does not rule out the surpassing of the former in technology.
However, in the opinion of some leading-edge AI companies, access to financing has far exceeded the 'first phase' of subsistence, but rather to provide support for further expansion, which means that the first phase of artificial intelligence The war may come to an end in a short time.
'The artificial intelligence landscape will change next year, and all companies will return to the business level, and now all of the AI products are poorly developed, including us and the big companies.' Ingenious said that 'artificial intelligence starts at the bottom To be a brand new system, it is a difficult process to achieve perfection.
Therefore, the industry tends to be pragmatic on the occasion, it is difficult to avoid a series of adjustments.Ink believes that next year will be the end of the first phase of artificial intelligence point of time.Although the business is difficult to achieve 10 billion scale, but the ' The tide throws everyone into the sea, and companies that do not cling to the wood hang.
As of next year, the industry will be digging stage. 'Now the depth of the artificial intelligence scene is far from enough, the future will continue to deepen, open up more scenarios.' India odd also said that the scope of artificial intelligence spread to a huge range of industries, There will be a great voice in this area of the giant companies, thus subverting the current competitive landscape of science and technology industry.