The AI Voice Unicorn Behind Smart Life

At the end of August this year, Suzhou sipic Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "sipic") disclosed that it had completed a new round of pre IPO Financing of hundreds of millions of yuan, and the old shareholder Yuanhe holdings continued to follow the investment. This is only more than April after the completion of the last round of 410 million yuan of e-round financing.

Behind the frequent financing is the acceleration of the capital pace of the AI voice unicorn.

"We are actively preparing to go public." Gao Shixing, chairman and CEO of sipic, introduced in an interview with 21st century economic reporter that the company has started the preparation work for listing in the window period of AI industry development.

Gao Shixing has been working in the field of artificial intelligence for more than ten years. He and his team have experienced the solitude in the embryonic stage of AI industry and experienced the noise of the explosion of smart speaker track.

In the view of this veteran entrepreneur in the field of artificial intelligence, the Internet of things industry, represented by the intelligent interconnection of all things, has just stepped into an upward phase, and market competition will continue to promote the development of the industry: "now, if there is no competition, there is no turning point. The more players, the better. They can jointly educate the market and drive the industrial chain. "

Dormant for ten years

The University of Cambridge was founded in Cambridge in 2007 as a high-tech enterprise.

After a small trial of ox knife, the three co founders of sibichi, Gao Shixing, Yu Kai and Lin Yuandong, returned to Suzhou Industrial Park in China. At that time, there were only a few start-up companies in the field of AI in China. Sipic first targeted its target market in the field of oral evaluation.

At that time, sipic was an AI voice company focusing on education business. Later, in 2014, the founding team stripped off the oral business unit and led by Lin Yuandong to establish Chi Sheng technology. With this as the starting point, sibuchi has comprehensively transformed the Internet of things.

Sipico, a second venture, focuses on the field of intelligent terminals, creating natural language interaction technology solutions for the Internet of things terminal markets such as smart car, smart home, smart toys / robots, smart wear, smart phones, etc. By the time Amazon echo dominates the smart speaker Market and China's smart speaker industry enters the "hundred box war", the market share of smart speakers in the field of smart speakers has been far ahead, and sipic, which is good at intelligent voice interaction technology, has basically achieved profit and loss balance.

The penetration of multiple application scenarios also marks that sipic has bid farewell to the helplessness of "finding nails with a hammer" at the beginning of its establishment. After everything intelligent detonates the intelligent voice market, sipic has covered many scenes in the field of intelligent terminals, such as intelligent white electricity and black electricity, intelligent wear, intelligent car, etc. now, there are hundreds of millions of Internet of things terminals in the domestic market, which are "aispeech inside".

The Internet of things has broad prospects. According to the Ministry of industry and information technology, by the end of February this year, the number of Internet of things users of the three major operators was 1.04 billion, and it is estimated that the number of mobile Internet of things connections in China will reach 1.2 billion by the end of 2020. As a partner of smart life, IOT products not only enter thousands of households, but also stay in the hearts of users.

All in Internet of things

During the outbreak of new pneumonia this year, the epidemic prevention and control robot developed by sipic has been employed in more than 100 cities in Jiangsu, Shandong, Chongqing, Hubei and Beijing. On the one hand, it supports grassroots community units in epidemic screening, information notification, residents playback and key tracking, on the other hand, it also forms big data reports to provide government departments as the basis for decision-making of epidemic prevention and control.

The new crown pneumonia epidemic makes the government departments aware of the limitations of grid management in dealing with emergencies, and the aforementioned digital assistant products have become one of the solutions for emergency; in the long run, the government departments are expected to further improve the governance efficiency and transparency through AI, and a large number of projects will be released in this field with the promotion of new infrastructure.

At present, the two core businesses of sipic include providing software hardware integrated full link voice interaction solutions for Internet of things intelligent terminals, intelligent cars and other customers, and providing "digital intelligent assistant" solutions based on Dialogic AI for financial, government, medical and other industries.

According to Gartner's prediction, the number of global enterprises and Internet of things terminal equipment in 2020 will increase by 21% compared with that in 2019; the revenue of global terminal electronic products will reach 389 billion US dollars by 2020, of which the scale of Greater China will reach 91 billion US dollars.

It is worth noting that sipuchi is also supporting the growth of start-ups in the field of artificial intelligence and intelligent interaction as an investor. As of the end of August this year, Cixing venture capital, an industrial investment fund jointly launched by sipic and Yuanhe chenkun, the investment management platform of Yuanhe holding master fund, has settled in dongshahu fund Town, Suzhou, and has invested in 27 ecological enterprises, forming a double link of business and capital with key enterprises in the industrial ecology.

"Calm down, the future value will gradually emerge. This is the concept of our entrepreneurship, but also the idea of making funds. " Gao Shixing saw that "these investments have gradually formed synergy with sipic, and the synergy will be stronger and stronger in the future."