In the era of PC and mobile phones, mainstream chip manufacturers are still dominated by Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung, etc. The arrival of AI era seems to bring new changes and opportunities to the mainland chip industry. The head of AI chip companies is rising. Even the Internet giant Ali has invested in three AI chip companies in the past three months. The cumulative number of Ali AI chip networks has reached five, and it has taken shape.
Recently, Qualcomm Ventures announced that it will invest in nine innovative companies in the field of artificial intelligence algorithms, chips, IoT, etc. In addition to Qualcomm, semiconductor giant Intel also locked in the active investment layout of mainland AI and UAV-related industries. Among them, in the investment content of Qualcomm, in addition to Shangtang Technology, Mobike, and AI chip new energy (Kneron), also promoted energy to the public's vision.
It is worth noting that the leading investor in this financing is not Qualcomm. Qualcomm is only a participant in the investment, and the Alibaba Entrepreneur Fund is the leader. This is already the third AI chip company invested by Ali or Ali related companies in the three months after the Cambrian and Shen Jian Technology (led by ant Jinfu).
Internet giants cling to AI chip entry points
Overview of the growth history of these major AI chip companies, most of which were established in 2014-2016. In 2017, AI applications were widely watched by the market, becoming the rising year of mainland AI chips, and gaining a lot of exposure and capital in the market. Highly concerned, and each family's financing funds are not small.
At the same time, Ali and Huawei, Tencent, Baidu, Lenovo and other companies are rapidly moving closer to the AI ​​chip industry in various ways, precisely because of the various vertical application scenarios in the diverse terminal market, including mobile phones, smart homes, security, and autonomous driving. In other fields, various dedicated AI chips are required as the underlying architecture. Regardless of the market prospects or the upstream resources of the AI ​​industry chain, the early layout of the AI ​​chip is very important.
Secondly, the terminal application of AI chips on smart phones is hot. The future of AI chips in the AI ​​entrance, such as smart audio and robots, is at the core strategic position, prompting the Internet giants to realize that they must accelerate the development of AI chips.
At the Yunqi Conference recently, Alibaba established the “Dharma Instituteâ€. Ma Yun announced the launch of the “New Technology Strategy†program, which is aimed at the core technologies of machine learning, chips, Internet of Things, operating systems and biometrics, and set up new teams to build new ones. Mechanisms and methods. Among them, Alibaba CTO Zhang Jianfeng mentioned that the Ali AI core developed by Ali will be available soon, which will make Alibaba Cloud's service more stable, controllable and efficient; and AI chip has become a strategic weapon. Ali, as a giant, will naturally not let go.
On the other hand, from the perspective of the chip industry, there are two challenges in the creation of AI chips: First, the capital investment of the chip is relatively large, and second, there are enough scenarios to be available. These two points are extremely lacking for startups, so it is important to introduce “capital†by introducing capital. In addition to the mature cloud computing platform, diverse application scenarios, and powerful new retail and online sales resources.
In particular, Alibaba Cloud generates a large amount of user data, which is used to train the most fertile nutrients in AI scenes, but also requires higher computing power, lower power consumption, and smaller volume of AI chips to meet operational requirements. .
Ali has invested in five AI chip companies
In 2015, Ali cooperated with Hangzhou Zhongtianwei to develop a Yun on Chip architecture for various segments of the Internet of Things. In January 2016, Ali officially became a shareholder of Zhongtianwei, and it is reported that its shareholding is nearly 30%. So far, Zhongtian Micro Accumulated SoC shipments have exceeded 600 million.
In November 2016, Ali also joined Tencent in the $23 million Series C financing of the FPGA programmable chip company Barefoot Networks. Barefoot Networks has developed the programmable chip Tofino, which is said to be twice as fast as any other chip on the market today and can process network packets at 6.5 megabits per second.
In addition, the Cambrian, Shenjian Technology and Kneron invested in the past three months, the Ali system has invested in five chip companies in the past two years, is quietly laying out the AI ​​chip industry, mastering the independent AI core chip .
However, the application scenarios of the companies invested by Ali are not exactly the same: Hangzhou Zhongtianwei focuses on low-power and information security fields such as IoT; Cambrian focuses on the mobile phone business and data center with high computing requirements; The focus is on security applications, while Kneron focuses on smart home and smart security applications.
In addition, unlike Cambrian, Shenjian Technology, and Horizon, which were born in mainland China, Kneron was founded in 2014 in San Diego, USA, and established a branch in Shenzhen in 2015. Founder Liu Juncheng worked in research and development at Samsung and Qualcomm. Because he is optimistic about artificial intelligence, he has invested in neural networks to learn NPU processor chips.
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