Go out and ask about Hong Kong stocks: China's AI 'living fossil” finally survives until spring

ChatGPT released by OpenAI at the end of 2022 triggered an unprecedented AI craze.

At that time, there was a voice that believed that China did not have outstanding AI companies and products, and that China’s AI was lagging behind...

The reason behind this perception is probably due to the lack of understanding of China’s AI that has been keeping a low profile for many years.

As early as 2012, Dr. Li Zhifei left Google and founded the artificial intelligence company Mobvoi Inc. in Beijing, which is regarded as an earlier Chinese AI startup company.

Li Zhifei holds a doctorate in computer science from Nanyang Technological Technology in Singapore and Johns Hopkins University in the United States. He has worked as a research scientist at Google headquarters for many years, mainly responsible for algorithm research on language translation models.

ZhenFund has always favored celebrity entrepreneurs and provided millions of yuan in angel investment to Li Zhifei. In the next two years, Mobvoi completed Series A and Series B financing, receiving tens of millions of dollars from Sequoia Capital and Haina Asia.

During

, the company mainly developed voice AI systems and launched the voice assistant "Xiaowen" (an early prototype of AI CoPilot) on multiple terminals.

However, AI at that time still lacked technology accumulation and application scenarios. In order to "survive", Mobvoi took the initiative to reduce the dimensionality. After releasing Ticwear, the world's first Chinese smartwatch operating system, in 2015 it launched TicWatch, a smartwatch with voice assistant and software and hardware integration functions.

TicWatch has quickly won a place in the global wearable hardware market with its exquisite and unique design, relatively powerful functions, and advanced marketing concepts.

As a result, Mobvoi has formed two business lines, facing future AI technology and based on the current AIoT smart device product line, which mainly includes smart watches, smart fitness equipment, etc.

That year, Mobvoi also received a US$75 million investment from Google.

This was the first company that Google Search Engine directly invested in the Chinese market after it withdrew from the Chinese market, so it caused a big sensation at the time.

In 2017, the company has become one of the first companies in China to launch a personal virtual assistant that can support multiple scenarios. Its voice AI is beginning to be used in high-end scenarios such as smart cars.

Also in the same year, the company received US$180 million in Series D financing from the Volkswagen Group and entered the "China Unicorn Enterprises" list. It is one of the few unicorns in China's AI field.

However, it is too cold to be at high places, especially for those children who have not really grown up.

In 2020, Mobvoi developed a universal Chinese language AI - a large model "UCLAI". However, the company did not receive much business and financing support at the time, so the concept was not widely accepted.

At the same time, the overall smart wearable market is weak, and TicWatch sales are declining, which has led to extreme pressure on the company's business. Bad news such as store closures, layoffs, and an IPO in sight continue to come. When you search for information about this company on Baidu, the first word in the association is "bankruptcy."

From the performance at that time, perhaps we can get a better glimpse of

’s embarrassment in the past few years.

In 2021, its AIoT business revenue was 338 million yuan, which dropped to 197 million yuan last year; starting in 2022, the AI ​​business is finally on the right track, with revenue exceeding 300 million yuan, but the investment is huge and profitability is limited. The result of this is that the company earned 251 million yuan in 2020 and fell into huge losses in 2021 and 2022. The net profits attributable to the parent company were -205 million yuan and -986 million yuan respectively.

However, the AI ​​boom since the end of last year has turned Mobvoi’s fortunes around.

With the AI-based development of China’s technology Internet industry, there has been a surge of speculation in the secondary market, including ChatGPT. Mobvoi, which was almost forgotten by the market, also disclosed its IPO prospectus on the evening of May 30, impacting its listing on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Its prospectus shows that the company is

one of the few AI companies in Asia with the ability to build general large models, and the only Chinese company among the top ten players in the global AIGC market.

Its general-purpose large model "UCLAI" was upgraded to "Sequence Monkey" this year and has provided services to 10 million users so far. Its AI dubbing assistant "Moyin Workshop" and its overseas version "DupDub" have attracted more than 6 million cumulative registered users of AIGC solutions around the world. Its key application scenario is in-vehicle voice interaction, which has been pre-installed on more than 2 million cars.

Compared with many companies that "plan" to lay out AI, launch large models or propose AI application plans, if Momovovo succeeds in its Hong Kong IPO, it may be

the first AI stock in the true sense.

Born in the prehistoric period of China's AI, it has endured the coldest winter, and Mobvoi has finally waited for the spring of the industry. Next, it may be the process of moving towards the blazing summer and the harvesting autumn.

However, this company will face many challenges.

In the short term, Momomobu’s cash flow is under pressure. As of the end of 2022, cash and cash equivalents were only 40.25 million yuan. Since the company's performance has been at huge losses for many years and it has continued to invest in research and development, the company has to accelerate the Hong Kong stock IPO to raise funds.

In the mid- to long-term, at the business level, the AI ​​​​100-model war is raging. Although Momovovo has the first-mover advantage, it is still under great pressure to withstand the large corps of technology and Internet giants.

For this company that already has large model capabilities, the key to maintaining its relative advantage is to find killer application scenarios as soon as possible before its direct competitors have even started.

Smart cars, which are also in the spotlight at the moment, will they go out and ask All In?

Source: Zebra Consumption

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