The dilemma and breakthrough of a unicorn with a valuation of 654.38+0 billion yuan

Less than half a year after the withdrawal of IPO, Yunzhisheng completed a new round of financing of 654.38 billion US dollars. However, the current financing environment is not optimistic, and Yunzhisheng may face more challenges in the process of putting voice technology on a specific track and building barriers.

On the weekend before deciding to withdraw the first IPO, Huang Wei, founder and CEO of Yunzhisheng, lay down for two whole days. The company spent a long time preparing for the initial public offering and suddenly stopped. In his mind, he frantically simulated the various situations that the company would face after the IPO stopped, and what methods and abilities he had to deal with it.

From June, 5438 to October, 2020 10, Yunzhisheng applied for listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board by adopting the second set of listing standards (that is, the estimated market value is not less than 654.38+0.5 billion yuan, the operating income in the latest year is not less than 200 million yuan, and the accumulated R&D investment in the last three years accounts for not less than 6543.8+0.5% of the accumulated operating income in the last three years). However, at the end of September 2020, Ant Financial was supervised to stop the IPO. The whole listing atmosphere in science and technology innovation board has gone from bad to worse.

In February this year, many companies, including Yunzhisheng, voluntarily withdrew their applications in science and technology innovation board. Subsequently, as expected, the market questioned Yunzhisheng four times: the gross profit margin was low, the revenue growth was less than expected, and AI company failed to escape the dilemma of large losses.

At this time, when AI companies competed to go public, as a unicorn on the voice track, Yunzhisheng slowed down. Huang Wei once asked himself, IPO is wonderful, but what kind of enterprise do you want to be? "I don't think IPO is my destination." This is his conclusion, and he hopes that the company will become healthier and healthier. "We have been developing for 9 years (Yunzhisheng was founded on 20 12), and I hope to develop for another 9 years."

In June, 20021,Yunzhisheng announced the launch of the D round of financing. At that time, the D 1 round of delivery was close to 1 billion US dollars, and the latest round of valuation was close to1billion RMB. This round of financing was led by Zhixin Capital, followed by Qiming Venture Capital and Pangu Venture Capital. These three investment institutions entered the shareholder sequence of Yunzhisheng as early as Yunzhisheng Angel Wheel and A Round.

Nine months after the IPO was withdrawn

Like most AI unicorn companies, Yunzhisheng has not yet made a profit. According to the prospectus, from 20 17 to the first half of 2020, the cumulative loss during the reporting period was nearly 800 million yuan. According to the prospectus, Yunzhisheng originally planned to raise 9,654,380+million yuan in four aspects: technology platform, chip research and development platform, smart hospital solution and supplementary working capital. This also means that after withdrawing the IPO, the company needs to solve the continuous capital demand by other means.

Accelerating the pace of commercialization and realizing open source is an inevitable choice.

In the nine months after withdrawing from IPO, Huang Wei frequently participated in customer visits. In March of this year, Huang Wei appeared in the cooperation signing activity between Yun Zhisheng and the Luojiang District Government of Quanzhou. As a big private manufacturing city, Quanzhou is developing the intelligent equipment industry in recent years. Yunzhisheng relies on many industry-leading equipment manufacturing enterprises in Quanzhou and Luojiang District to try to explore the commercialization path of artificial intelligence technology in manufacturing scenarios. On June+10, 5438, Huang Wei went to Xiamen Jinlong United Automobile Industry Co., Ltd. and reached a strategic cooperation with Jinlong Bus on intelligent transportation construction.

After the IPO exit, the internal organizational structure has also been fine-tuned.

In the process of IPO, because there is an opportunity to sort out the business of the whole company in strict accordance with the requirements of intermediaries. At present, Yunzhisheng's organizational structure has been adjusted to two major business groups: IoT and smart medical care. In addition, the Internet of Things is divided into basic business and innovative business. The former focuses on basic products such as chips and modules, while the latter focuses on the overall solution innovation of intelligent Internet of Things.

Huang Wei tried to delegate authority and speed up decision-making through the mechanism of the business department. As the company entered the 10 year, as CEO, he felt that he should "retreat" appropriately and pass the pressure on to his partners, "which may be more conducive to their growth".

This year, on the professional track of AI voice, the value of AI voice to medical care is prominent. Iflytek, with a market value of more than 654.38+30 billion yuan, announced in the middle of this year that it planned to spin off the smart medical business as a whole and go public independently, so as to design a better incentive mechanism for the team and attract talents.

In April, Microsoft bought Nuance in cash at a total price of $65.438+$09.7 billion, which was the second largest acquisition in Microsoft history. Nuance is called "American version of Iflytek". About 77% hospitals in America use Nuance's system. The company's profit mainly comes from the voice recognition service of doctor-patient conversation, customer service phone and voicemail. Microsoft CEO Satya? Satya Nadella wrote on Twitter: "Artificial intelligence is the top priority in the technical field, and medical care is its most urgent application field."

Medical treatment is one of Yunzhisheng's main businesses at present.

10 ended, Yunzhisheng continued to carry out recruitment activities in full swing, including the role of doctor. Liang Jiaen, chairman and CTO of Yunzhisheng, said that Yunzhisheng went deep into the medical field and began to build a knowledge map on 20 18. At this time, a team of doctors began to be established. On the one hand, they can help this AI team to sort out the real needs of the hospital and understand the norms and corresponding knowledge system of the hospital; On the other hand, they can help to judge whether machines can replace labor.

According to Huang Wei's plan, after this round of financing, the performance has increased, and the company has also contacted some new investment institutions while conducting business. 10 In mid-October, Huang Wei said in an interview with China Entrepreneur that Yunzhisheng's revenue increased by 70% to 80% without increasing the number of people. "I think I have initially achieved my expected goal."

Commercial multi-legged walking

Looking at 20 1 1 and 20 12, the artificial intelligence track has not yet started. Li Zhichao, a partner of Pangu Venture Capital, met Huang Wei, then the president of Shanda Innovation Research Institute Branch, through Benjurry Ben, the founder of UCloud. At that time, Siri of Apple's mobile phone was in full swing. "Many people will vote for Siri's competing products." Li Zhichao said that the mainstream understanding is to be a platform-level company. "So many people have spent their energy on this, which has helped Huang Wei reduce a lot of pressure."

When Yunzhisheng 20 12 was founded, Bo Huang decided to do to B and take root in specific industries. In Li Zhichao's view, speech recognition will move towards semantic understanding, and then enter an industry. In addition to technical barriers, once it comes to business processes, an AI voice technology company can play a very core role. "Language can directly penetrate into the core of business."

Yunzhisheng's initial customers were Internet companies such as LeTV, Xiaomi and Sohu. Due to the high usage rate of LeTV TV speech recognition service, IoT such as home appliances began to be focused in 20 14. According to the prospectus, in 20 18, 20 19 and the first half of 2020, the revenue of intelligent voice interactive products was 654.38+56 million yuan, 654.38+37 million yuan and 24 million yuan respectively; The smart IOT solution realized revenue of 65.438+0.7 billion yuan, 0.5 billion yuan and 0.5 billion yuan respectively. During the reporting period, the company's business strategy was upgraded from an intelligent single product supplier to an intelligent IOT solution provider.

Huang Wei said that in 20 18 and 20 19, the giants used smart speakers as the entrance of e-commerce and search engines, which set off a high subsidy war, thus threatening the downstream manufacturers of Yunzhisheng. "We were hit by 20 18 and 20 19, but we adjusted our organizational structure on 20 18 and began to move towards solutions."

In the year when the IoT component business was threatened, Yunzhisheng made a breakthrough in intelligent IoT solutions. 20 19, Yunzhisheng and Shimao Group jointly established Yunmao.

At that time, Shimao was looking for some partners with sufficient technical ability to promote the intelligent upgrade of Shimao Group's buildings, communities, hotels and property management. Yunzhisheng has had some cases before, hoping to find relatively well-known customers in the industry for further promotion. "Everyone had the same goal at that time", so the cooperation between the two sides advanced very quickly.

Liang Jiaen said that through the cloud cat, Yunzhisheng polished the system based on hotel community management, and the interaction scheme of Yunzhisheng was used at the bottom of this system. In the subsequent development and replication of the space Internet of Things project, the team hopes to achieve 80% reusability, and the optimization ratio of personalized customization development is controlled at around 10%.

In the process of cooperation with Shimao, Huang Wei realized that the execution efficiency and practical work style of the other party were different from those of technology companies. "It is common for them to spend the night. Some of our traditional corporate partners' management meetings will be specially arranged at night or on weekends. "

However, in the first half of 2020, Yunmao contributed 37.6% of revenue to Yunzhisheng, and Yunzhisheng was questioned to rely heavily on big customers. Huang Wei said that this ratio is a phased data. "This year, this ratio will be lower."

In addition to IoT, Yunzhisheng also tested water in the direction of education, vehicle and medical care, and finally decided to focus on medical care on 20 16. In addition, Huang Wei believes that the input-output ratio of medical care is greater than that of vehicles.

The first medical product launched by Yunzhisheng is the medical version of voice input method. In 20 16, Yunzhisheng set up a medical electronic medical record entry system for Union Medical College Hospital, which took about half a year. The experimental results of the hospital show that it can save doctors at least half the time of writing medical records.

The cooperation with Union Medical College Hospital provided an endorsement for Yun Zhisheng to promote the medical version of voice input method in the future. "Everyone thinks we've finally got something." Liang Jiaen said, but the medical version of the voice input method is only an auxiliary tool or an efficiency tool, and it has not cut into the core business of the whole medical itself.

In 2020, Yunzhisheng launched products such as medical record quality control and medical insurance fee control based on medical records. In the past, both CDC and medical insurance companies sampled medical records through doctors and experts by "flying inspection". Now, they are trying to get the AI ? ? brain to comprehensively review the medical records, check whether the cases are complete and consistent, or reduce unreasonable medical insurance costs. Huang Wei said that in the first half of this year, Yunzhisheng cooperated with a local medical insurance bureau to increase the control rate from 1% to nearly 7%.

What should the giants do if they enter the medical market where Yunzhisheng is located? Huang Wei said that the medical market is relatively regionalized and decentralized. Even if the giants come in, they should come one by one. "Therefore, it is difficult for giants to take all the resources in the medical market."

When Li Zhichao visited Yunzhisheng's hospital clients, he received mixed feedback. "The demand is very turbulent, but in terms of the performance state that technology can achieve, everyone may feel that it has not met expectations. The core still has high expectations for products. "

According to the number of national medical and health institutions published by the National Health and Wellness Committee, there are more than 2,500 tertiary hospitals in China, including 1 0,479 tertiary hospitals. In this regard, Liang Jiaen said that the top three are only the starting point, and the places that are really needed should be in primary hospitals such as dimethyl.

Will it be acquired?

According to the prospectus, Yunzhisheng invested a total of 603 million yuan during the reporting period, accounting for 65,438+007.4% of the accumulated revenue. Huang Wei said that under the U+X strategy, Yunzhisheng's core technology research and development is constantly evolving, which has nothing to do with the cold and hot capital. In addition, U and X promote each other, and the advantage of startups over platform companies is that they can go deep into the workshop. "I think many people may be misled by the scale of the data. What we want is data that can really happen in the scene, which is more targeted. In this sense, I believe that we have greater advantages than many Internet companies. "

Bo Huang put forward Yunzhisheng's "Cloud Core" strategy in 20 14, but it was not until 20 18 that Yunzhisheng launched its first dedicated chip "Swift". In this regard, Liang Jiaen said that from 20 14 to 20 15, the team first built a chip module with general chips from Qualcomm and other brands. After testing the commercialization of the scheme on a general chip, in 20 16, Yunzhisheng formally set up a team to develop a special chip. Since then, the team has launched the "Hummingbird" chip on the basis of "Swift" to further reduce the power consumption of the chip.

Liang Jiaen said that only by reaching the level of 10 million can we balance the cost of R&D, design and chip release in the early stage of the chip. "If you achieve more than 654.38+million chips, basically the cost of a chip will become a dollar." Yunzhisheng Chip OEM is a branch of Lianhua Electronics. Because the manufacturing process of Yunzhisheng chip is only 28nm and 45nm, the pressure faced by the chip industry chain has little effect on Yunzhisheng.

In addition, Yi Cartoon Technology, which is strategically invested by Yunzhisheng and Geely Holding Group, plans to launch the automotive chip "Snow Leopard" at the end of this year, and plans to provide automotive voice solutions for OEMs such as Geely.

It is worth noting that at present, Yunzhisheng has not invested much in the car field where technology giants are highly competitive. Huang Wei believes that the input-output ratio in this field is smaller than that in medical care and IoT. In addition, Yunzhisheng did not personally do car voice, but invested in a downstream company "peer". They integrated Yunzhisheng's voice technology, cut into the market from the back-loading, and now gradually turned to the front-loading.

After Nuance sells itself to Microsoft, will Bo Huang still consider the acquisition?

Huang Wei said that the purpose of his venture is to be a respected technology company. "If it's just for acquisition, it's not necessary for everyone to start a business."

In Li Zhichao's view, M&A is just a way of capital flow. For Yunzhisheng, it is more important now: First, the business space is becoming clearer and clearer, and the business must be done first; Second, further improve the team; Third, whether it is IPO or primary market financing, do a good job in capital reserves.

Compared with the past few years, the current financing environment is not optimistic. Yunzhisheng will face more challenges in the process of putting voice technology on a specific track and building barriers.