As the forerunner of China's artificial intelligence industry, Shanghai gathers 1/3 of the country's artificial intelligence talents, has more than 1,000 core artificial intelligence enterprises, and the scale of ai-related industries exceeds 70 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, in order to continuously improve the healthy development of ai ecology and build the "Shanghai plateau" of ai, Shanghai is accelerating the implementation of projects. In 2018, Shanghai raised more than 60 billion yuan in ai-related funds, a record high.

Innovation platforms and major scientific research achievements continue to emerge

In January this year, Shanghai songjiang district and the institute of neuroscience of Chinese academy of sciences, sheshan G60 brain intellectual science base, held a major press conference on the "somatic cell clone monkey model of biological rhythm disorder". This is the first time to successfully construct a group of biological rhythm disorder rhesus monkey models with consistent genetic background.

This breakthrough marks the maturation of somatic cell cloning technology in China, and the realization of batch cloning of experimental disease model monkey, which means that the number of experimental animals used worldwide is expected to be significantly reduced, and drug development is entering a fast lane. With the release of these results, the institute of neuroscience of the Chinese academy of sciences and the Shanghai institute of materia medica of the Chinese academy of sciences have signed a strategic cooperation agreement to promote the development of new drugs in the field of neuropsychiatric diseases.

"G60 brain intelligence science and innovation base" is one of the eight AI innovation platforms signed by songjiang district government and institute of neurology of Chinese academy of sciences.

At present, G60 brainbrain science and innovation base is being built to become the "frontier position" of brain science research and the development platform of brain-like intelligence industry, which is expected to be completed within two years. It will include the research and development center of brain disease treatment means, the center of brain disease efficacy evaluation and the center of new drug detection and analysis. Pu muming, director of the institute of neuroscience of the Chinese academy of sciences, said that foreign teams have been interested in cooperating in songjiang.

In addition to the G60 brainpower innovation base, a number of global ai innovation projects were signed and settled in Shanghai at the 2018 world ai conference. These projects are all 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 10 billion artificial intelligence industry funds.

Take shangtang technology as an example. Currently, the company is building a new generation of major AI computing power platform, which will be capable of more than 5 billion computing power per second in the future. It plans to invest at least 6 billion yuan in Shanghai within five years to build four functional headquarters, including the global r&d headquarters.

China business news has learned that by the first half of this year, Shanghai shangtang staff has increased from 14 to more than 500, including nearly 350 research and development personnel. The company is also continuously introducing international high-end talents in the field of artificial intelligence. In addition, sensetime has implemented strategic cooperation with Shanghai yidian group and lingang group to build smart city and smart industrial park.

"Shanghai's talent advantages, industrial advantages and extensive advantages in the application fields of super-large cities will provide a huge opportunity platform and practical experience for sensetime to further promote the commercialization of AI technology." "Shanghai is actively building a national artificial intelligence high ground," the company told China business news. "it has gathered about a third of the country's AI talent, and the comprehensive environment is suitable for the overall development of international talent. At the same time, Shanghai has excellent AI industry foundation, perfect database and developed capital market, which can create conditions for industry incubation and development."

Industrial fund group already formed primary

Shanghai has taken a number of major measures for the next step of ai development, including further strengthening the clusters of advantageous enterprises and formulating multi-level enterprise introduction and cultivation plans; We will continue to work hard from the aspects of industrial layout, technological breakthroughs, application demonstration, and ecological construction to match international top standards, build world-class artificial intelligence brands, and magnify the spillover effect. We will focus on the development of intelligent driving, intelligent robots, intelligent hardware, intelligent sensors, intelligent chips, intelligent software and other fields, continue to attract leading domestic and foreign enterprises, and increase support for local high-growth enterprises and start-ups.

It is understood that in order to provide financial security for the artificial intelligence industry, Shanghai artificial intelligence industry investment fund has formed a plan to raise 10 billion yuan in the first phase. Before that, G60 corridor artificial intelligence industry fund, yangpu artificial intelligence venture capital fund and other funds have also been launched and set up, initially forming a fund group.

Among them, "G60 science and innovation corridor artificial intelligence industry fund" was signed as the Shanghai ai innovation project at the 2018 world ai conference, aiming to raise 10 billion yuan. Based in Shanghai and facing the Yangtze river delta, the fund mainly invests in artificial intelligence and related industrial chain projects with G60 science and innovation corridor as the industrial hinterland, including enterprises in the fields of chip, sensor, algorithm and application layer of intelligent home, intelligent driving and intelligent medical treatment.

As the core area of advanced manufacturing and modern service industry in the Yangtze river delta, G60 science and innovation corridor has laid a sound industrial foundation for the development of artificial intelligence and created a good application scene. Meanwhile, top universities in the region gather together, which can provide a steady stream of scientific and creative talents for the development of artificial intelligence. At present, many well-known artificial intelligence enterprises have been born in the G60 science and innovation corridor, which is expected to become the agglomeration area of China's artificial intelligence industry in the future.

Cheng fang, President of Shanghai guohe investment co., LTD., the manager of G60 science and innovation corridor artificial intelligence industry fund, once said that G60 science and innovation fund relies on G60 science and innovation corridor, which not only invests in enterprises in the area covered by G60 science and innovation corridor, but also selects excellent projects and teams at home and abroad to guide them to land in G60 science and innovation corridor.

At present, the ai industry chain includes the lowest level of infrastructure, such as chips, sensors, cloud computing, open source platforms, etc. Technology layer in the middle layer, such as image recognition, natural language processing, robot movement, etc. The top layer of applications, such as industrial applications and robotics.

From the infrastructure layer to the application layer, the market capacity is gradually expanding, Mr Cheng said. From the perspective of fund investment, the application layer can accommodate more enterprises, and the investment success rate is relatively high. For this reason, the foundation chooses enterprises that are deeply engaged in vertical applications and provide perfect solutions.

At the technology level and infrastructure level, the fund will pay more attention to relatively early or more segmented enterprises, such as sensor companies with strong import substitution and few market favorites, some ai chip companies with reasonable valuation, and independent third-party data annotation and data cleaning companies.

Top institutions have been hiring

At the 2018 world ai conference, amazon AWS Shanghai ai research institute and Microsoft Asia research institute (Shanghai) signed contracts with three research institutes, namely, microsoft-yidian ai innovation institute and iflytek Shanghai ai and brain science institute.

On May 24th this year, "Microsoft Asia research institute (Shanghai) and microsoft-yidian artificial intelligence innovation institute" was officially unveiled, and the artificial intelligence talent training system was launched. "We believe that Shanghai is a multi-faceted, multi-talented, multi-talented city. This city is perfect for the research, creation and implementation of artificial intelligence. It is because of the opportunities that Shanghai presents that Microsoft has a very extensive and extensive presence in Shanghai." Pan tianyou, deputy director of Microsoft Asia research institute, told China business news.

Pan tianyou also said that Microsoft will expand its high-level ai research capabilities to Shanghai, explore innovative cooperation mode to promote the digital transformation of government and enterprises, and promote the accelerated development of new generation of ai technology in various industries in Shanghai. But he acknowledges that what the academy needs most is talent, and that talent recruitment and training still takes time.

Amazon AWS Shanghai artificial intelligence research institute also said that it will gather the world's top AI talents to participate in and develop the open source deep learning framework ecosystem.

Progress has also been made in building the iflytek (Shanghai) institute of artificial intelligence and brain sciences. "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," zhao xiang, general manager of iflytek Shanghai, told China business news. Shanghai is also stepping up research and development, because Shanghai has more talents in universities and artificial intelligence, and we will definitely prefer to recruit local talents."

In addition, the first financial reporter also learned that iflytek is now stepping up the layout of regional headquarters and overseas headquarters in Shanghai.

Zhao xiang said that not long ago, lingang also released a free trade zone plan supporting the development of artificial intelligence, which is a good thing for ustc flytek to settle in Shanghai, and the company will deepen the cooperation with lingang in the future. "Real and visible application cases are the foundation of ai development. Shanghai has rich application scenarios, which will help us deepen the application of ai in various industries, including education, medical care and finance."

Source: China business news