Leading enterprises lead a large number of artificial intelligence projects to accelerate their landing in Shanghai.
In 2018, the financing amount of artificial intelligence related industries in Shanghai has exceeded 60 billion yuan, reaching a record high.
As a pioneer in China’s artificial intelligence industry, Shanghai has gathered one-third of the country’s artificial intelligence talents, with more than 1,000 artificial intelligence core enterprises, and the scale of artificial intelligence-related industries exceeds 70 billion yuan.
At the same time, in order to continuously improve the healthy development ecology of artificial intelligence and build an artificial intelligence "Shanghai highland", Shanghai is still accelerating the landing of the project. In 2018, the financing amount of artificial intelligence related industries in Shanghai has exceeded 60 billion yuan, reaching a record high.
Innovative platforms and major scientific research achievements are constantly emerging.
In January this year, Songjiang District and the Institute of Neuroscience of China Academy of Sciences held a major achievement conference on "Somatic Cloned Monkey Model with Biological Rhythm Disorder" at G60 Brain Science and Technology Innovation Base in Sheshan. This is the first time in the world that a batch of macaque models with biological rhythm disorder with consistent genetic background have been successfully constructed.
This breakthrough marks the maturity of somatic cell cloning technology in China, and the realization of mass cloning of experimental disease model monkeys means that the number of experimental animals in the world is expected to be greatly reduced, and drug research and development will enter the fast lane. With the release of the above results, the Institute of Neuroscience of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai Institute of Pharmacology of Chinese Academy of Sciences also signed a strategic cooperation agreement to promote the research and development of new drugs in the field of neuropsychiatric diseases.
"G60 Brain Intelligence Science and Technology Innovation Base" is one of eight AI innovation platforms jointly signed by Songjiang District Government and Institute of Neurology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is a representative of Industry-University-Research cooperation and was signed and settled in Shanghai at the 2018 World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
At present, G60 Brain Science and Technology Innovation Base is being built into a "frontier position" of brain science research and a platform for the development of brain-like intelligence industry, which is expected to be completed within two years, and will include a research and development center for brain disease treatment, a therapeutic evaluation center for brain diseases and a new drug detection and analysis center. Academician Muming Poo, director of the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that foreign teams are interested in coming to Songjiang for cooperation.
In addition to the G60 Brain Science and Technology Innovation Base, at the 2018 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, a number of global artificial intelligence innovation projects were signed and settled in Shanghai. These projects are aimed at key core areas such as AI industrial chain, innovation chain and value chain, including 8 AI innovation centers (laboratories) such as Alibaba and Baidu, 8 AI innovation platforms such as Tencent and Huawei, 3 AI research institutes such as Microsoft and Amazon, and a 10 billion artificial intelligence industry fund.
Take Shangtang Technology, one of the contracted companies, as an example. At present, the company is building a new generation of AI major computing platform, which can exceed 5 billion computing power per second in the future, and plans to invest no less than 6 billion yuan in Shanghai within five years to build four functional headquarters, including global R&D headquarters.
The First Financial Reporter learned that as of the first half of this year, the number of employees in Shang Tang has increased from 14 to over 500, including nearly 350 R&D personnel, and the company is constantly introducing international high-end talents in the field of artificial intelligence. In addition, Shangtang Technology has implemented strategic cooperation with Shanghai Yidian Group and Lingang Group to build a smart city and smart industrial park.
"Shanghai’s talent advantages, industrial advantages and extensive application fields in super-large cities will provide a huge opportunity platform and practical experience for Shangtang Technology to further promote the commercialization of AI technology." Shangtang Technology told the First Financial Reporter, "Shanghai is actively building a highland of national artificial intelligence. At present, it has gathered about one-third of AI talents in China, and the comprehensive environment is more suitable for the overall development of international talents. At the same time, Shanghai has an excellent AI industry foundation, a perfect database and a developed capital market, which can create conditions for the incubation and development of the industry. "
The industrial fund group has taken initial shape.
Shanghai has taken many important measures for the next development of artificial intelligence, including further expanding the clusters of advantageous enterprises and formulating multi-level enterprise introduction and cultivation plans; Continue to exert efforts in industrial layout, technical research, application demonstration, ecological construction, etc., benchmark the top international standards, build a world-class artificial intelligence brand, and amplify the spillover effect; Focus on the development of intelligent driving, intelligent robots, intelligent hardware, intelligent sensors, intelligent chips, intelligent software and other fields, continue to attract leading Chinese and foreign enterprises to develop, and increase support for local high-growth enterprises and start-ups
It is understood that in order to provide financial support for the artificial intelligence industry, the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund has formed a formation plan, raising 10 billion yuan in the first phase. Previously, G60 Science and Technology Innovation Corridor Artificial Intelligence Industry Fund, Yangpu Artificial Intelligence Venture Capital Fund and other funds have also been initiated, initially forming a fund group.
Among them, the "G60 Science and Technology Corridor Artificial Intelligence Industry Fund" was signed as a Shanghai artificial intelligence innovation project at the 2018 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, with a target fundraising scale of 10 billion yuan. Based in Shanghai, facing the Yangtze River Delta and taking G60 Science and Technology Innovation Corridor as the industrial hinterland, the fund mainly invests in artificial intelligence and related industrial chain projects, including chips, sensors, algorithms at the basic level and enterprises in the fields of smart home, smart driving and smart medical care at the application level.
As the core area of advanced manufacturing and modern service industry in the Yangtze River Delta, G60 Science and Technology Corridor has laid a sound industrial foundation for the development of artificial intelligence and created a good application scenario. At the same time, the gathering of top universities in the region can provide a steady stream of science and technology talents for the development of artificial intelligence. At present, G60 Science and Technology Corridor has produced many well-known artificial intelligence enterprises, and it is expected to become a gathering area of artificial intelligence industry in China in the future.
Cheng Fang, president of Shanghai Guohe Investment, the manager of G60 Science and Technology Innovation Corridor Artificial Intelligence Industry Fund, once said that G60 Science and Technology Innovation Fund relies on G60 Science and Technology Innovation Corridor, not only investing in enterprises covered by G60 Science and Technology Innovation Corridor, but also choosing to invest in excellent projects and teams at home and abroad to guide them to land in G60 Science and Technology Innovation Corridor.
At present, the artificial intelligence industry chain includes the lowest infrastructure layer, such as chips, sensors, cloud computing, open source platforms, etc. The technical layer in the middle layer, such as image recognition, natural language processing, robot action, etc. The top application layer, such as applications in various industries and robots.
Cheng Fang said that from the infrastructure layer to the application layer, the market capacity is gradually expanding. From the perspective of fund investment, the application layer can accommodate more enterprises, and the investment success rate is relatively high. Therefore, the Foundation chooses enterprises that deeply cultivate vertical applications and provide perfect solutions.
In the technical layer and infrastructure layer, the fund will pay more attention to relatively early or more subdivided enterprises, such as sensor enterprises with strong import substitution and less sought after by the market, some artificial intelligence chip enterprises with reasonable valuation, and independent third-party data labeling and data cleaning companies.
Top institutions have been "recruiting"
At the 2018 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Amazon AWS Shanghai Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Microsoft Research Asia (Shanghai) signed contracts with Microsoft-Yidian Institute of Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Iflytek (Shanghai) Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Brain Science.
On May 24th this year, "Microsoft Asia Research Institute (Shanghai) and Microsoft — Yidian Artificial Intelligence Innovation Institute was officially unveiled and launched the artificial intelligence talent training system. "We believe that Shanghai is a diverse, versatile and multi-funded city. For example, Shanghai has finance, medical care and manufacturing. This city is very suitable for the research, creation and landing of artificial intelligence. It is precisely because of the opportunities brought by Shanghai that Microsoft’s investment and layout in Shanghai are very extensive and rich. " Pan Tianyou, vice president of Microsoft Research Asia, told the First Financial Reporter.
Pan Tianyou also said that Microsoft has extended its high-level artificial intelligence research capabilities to Shanghai, explored innovative cooperation models to promote the digital transformation of the government and enterprises, and promoted the accelerated development of a new generation of artificial intelligence technology in various industries in Shanghai. However, he also admitted that what the institute needs most is talents, and the recruitment and training of talents still need time.
Amazon AWS Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Research Institute also said that it is necessary to gather the world’s top AI talents and participate in and develop the open source deep learning framework ecosystem.
Iflytek (Shanghai) Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Brain Science has also made progress. Zhao Xiang, general manager of Iflytek Shanghai, told CBN: "We are moving the political and legal innovation business center, financial business center and big data operation center to the new office building in Changning District. R&D in Shanghai is also strengthening. Because there are more talents in universities and artificial intelligence in Shanghai, we will definitely tend to recruit local talents. "
In addition, CBN reporter also learned that Iflytek is stepping up the layout of its regional headquarters and overseas headquarters.
Zhao Xiang said that Lingang recently released a plan to support the development of artificial intelligence, which is good for Iflytek to settle in Shanghai, and the company will deepen its cooperation with Lingang in the future. "Real and visible application cases are the foundation of the development of artificial intelligence. Shanghai has a very rich application scenario, which helps us to deepen the application of artificial intelligence in education, medical care, finance and other industries."