The real survival of the companies behind crazy AI

Crazy AI

Behind the crazy news reports, the AI industry is also indispensable for the entry of capital. In the first half of 2018, global financing in the field of artificial intelligence reached US$43.5 billion, and China's scale reached US$31.7 billion, accounting for more than three-quarters of the world's total. Another beautiful victory: China has obtained three-quarters of the world's financing with only one-fifth of the world's enterprises, and investors are looking forward to China's AI space.

The real survival of AI companies

According to the media's AI landing report, in 2017, China's AI startups received more than 50 billion yuan in financing, but the top 100 companies in commercial implementation generated less than 10 billion yuan in revenue. In the entire industry chain, more than 90% of AI companies are still in the loss-making stage, and the vast majority of enterprises have an annual operating income of less than 200 million.

In response to this phenomenon, Wei Zhe, the former CEO of Alibaba, said: At present, the bubble of artificial intelligence is huge, touted by the media, and the market is overheated. Many companies on the market claim to be "artificial intelligence" companies, but ninety percent of artificial intelligence companies are "pseudo-artificial intelligence".

Pseudo-artificial intelligence is rampant and has poor practicability

The inability of the technology to be commercialized is the key to the fact that AI companies have been branded as "pseudo-AI".

It has been observed that part of the reason is that enterprises over-advertise lab data, leaving users with a large gap in the actual experience; Another part of the reason is that enterprises blindly follow suit and lack real innovation capabilities, among which face recognition technology is the most significant, when the product technology tends to be homogeneous, the price war will break out at any time.

The nature of AI

What is Artificial Intelligence? The real meaning of artificial intelligence is "machine learning", and only when there is the right data to learn from can machines really and brilliantly do certain tasks.

Four bubbles affect the development of artificial intelligence:

Technology bubble: Artificial intelligence is an interdisciplinary and application-oriented discipline with a high professional threshold, and there are very few people who really know how to do it.

Capital bubble: There is too much capital and too many concepts, and the tuyere can be seen, but everyone is waiting and seeing how to stand on the tuyere.

Business bubble: Nowadays, many artificial intelligence is pseudo-intelligence, and most enterprises do not know how to use intelligence and data to serve customers and create value.

Valuation bubble: It is not difficult to value hundreds of millions, but the difficulty is how to find a profit point. At present, most artificial intelligence is still in the stage of technical tools, and there is still a big gap between the platform and productization, and it is not profitable.

The way out for AI companies

Artificial intelligence companies under the capital bubble have serious product homogeneity, and some companies have no real innovation but blindly follow the trend, and "squeezing the bubble and grasping the pain points" is the only way out for AI companies. In this environment of survival of the fittest, AI companies should be down-to-earth, cultivate internal skills, seek progress while maintaining stability, use data and technology, find a better way to commercialize, better serve users, and realize their own value.