Compared to the IPO, we are more concerned about the 100 million dollars and the C-round financing behind the Aniseed

Yesterday (November 23), the battalion commander's Circle of Friends by the "Shang Tang Technology plan IPO and will set up research and Development center in the United States" brush screen. Even the media exposure, "the first year of commercial soup technology IPO."

The news was first blown out by Reuters. In this connection, AI technology headquarters to the commercial soup technology official check whether it has begun to prepare for the IPO, as of press, received a reply to "I do not have a specific IPO timetable, other rumors do not comment."

I wonder if Dr Tang, the co-founder of the Shang-Tang technology, was deliberately in the lookout for a question from Reuters or accidentally. The term IPO is really incredible for the early AI startups. Tang said in an interview that "is looking for a suitable financial person." Whether this is to go public to find the right person, or the original financial head of the departure of the normal job vacancies.

In response, the official reply to: "The company has been looking for a suitable CFO, not because of the listing, or other reasons." ”

"100 million Dollar Order" behind the king who is the original.

Putting aside the IPO issue, Dr Tang, in an interview with Reuters, also mentioned an important number of 100 million dollar orders.

The original text reads as follows:

A $ million deal to develop autonomous driving technology with a partner, which him declined to name.

Who is the partner that is mentioned here?

To see Shangtang in the B round of financing, disclosed a message:

According to the 36 Krypton report, in July this year, the commercial Tang technology announced the 410 million U.S. dollar financing news, the founder of the company said that the new financing will be used in three areas, and one of them is "to increase product input, expand the product line, including with a large OEM manufacturers to deepen the unmanned project cooperation."

The emphasis here is on "a large OEM Manufacturer", which indicates that cooperation has entered a substantive phase.

Then, AI technology camp in September this year to interview the co-founder and vice president of Yangfan, he said, "commercial soup from last year began to exert unmanned driving, now with the world's top five of a car company formed a very deep cooperation, the future will devote more resources." ”

In the words of "the world's top five of a car enterprise", in the end is which car companies.

This is a list of global carmaker market capitalisation as of June 30, 2017. In addition to Tesla, there are Toyota, Daimler, Volkswagen, BMW, GM, Honda and Ford. Modern cars are far behind a grade due to market value and sales, so they can be ruled out directly.

The next step is to start a tense and exciting decryption.

General Motors acquired Cruise automation, an unmanned vehicle technology start-up, early in 2016. The company's CEO, Kyle Vog, disclosed in September this year that the company and General Motors are ready for unmanned vehicle production. All of the unmanned vehicle elements are already in place, so long as the software development is completed and the regulatory environment is mature, mass production can be achieved.

So it's impossible to be General Motors.

Look at the BMW again.

July 2016, BMW, Intel and Mobileye announced cooperation, the first disclosure of the progress of unmanned driving projects.

At the CES conference in January 2017, BMW, Intel and Mobileye jointly announced that about 40 BMW unmanned vehicles will start the road test in the second half of 2017, and that the BMW 7-series vehicles will use Intel and Mobileye technology.

So, it can't be BMW.

Look at the Volkswagen car again.

In February 2017, VW signed a partnership agreement with Mobileye to develop autopilot, and released news that it would carry Mobileye's camera sensors in the future.

In fact, the public and Mobileye had a long history. As early as 2015, Volkswagen's Audi adopted the Mobileye EyeQ3, supporting the realization of its full AEB function based on the camera.

In this way, the public is also ruled out.

Look at Daimler again.

In July 2017, Momenta, a start-up company, announced a $46 million trillion round of financing for the second, with Daimler Group following the vote. It is reported that Momenta founder Cao Xudong has been working in the commercial soup technology, after a variety of reasons to leave work alone, so in the field of unmanned driving is a commercial soup competitor. It is logically illogical for Daimler to invest in momenta and deepen its cooperation with the commercial soup.

In this way, Daimler was also ruled out.

And one is Ford.

February 2017, Ford with 1 billion U.S. dollars will automatically drive the artificial intelligence company Argo AI Most of the equity income bag, the money will be in the next 5 years into the Argo AI research and development.

So Ford is unlikely to be.

The rest is Toyota and Honda.

Both are extremely likely to be in the same house. Comparatively speaking, the two Japanese companies are relatively conservative in terms of unmanned driving.

In January 2016, Toyota invested 1 billion of billions of dollars in building a Silicon Valley AI research Laboratory, and said it would devote 50 million dollars to two research centers at Stanford and MIT in the next 5 years to collaborate on artificial intelligence and robotics in order to introduce more advanced automatic driving capabilities to Toyota cars.

In this way, Toyota's development trend in unmanned driving is mainly in cooperation with Silicon Valley.

In addition, in the company invested by Toyota AI Ventures, Nauto has a very similar ability to handle pedestrian and motor vehicle identification. Does Toyota need to play with two similar companies at the same time?

Finally, Honda is left.

Honda reached a partnership agreement with Google Waymo at the end of 2016 on unmanned driving. But in July this year, no progress was announced after 7 months of cooperation.

Citing Tencent news: sources say Honda has been on the ground in almost the past seven months, and "progress is discouraging". It will also increase the pressure on Honda, which is scheduled to sell unmanned cars that can travel at high speeds in 2020.

Yuji Yasui, a Honda engineer in charge of unmanned technology, said in the report that Honda's current level is unlikely to achieve this goal. Companies need to obtain expertise from the outside to achieve their stated goals. The company needs to work with universities or other start-ups that specialize in software technology.

It is also in July this year, the commercial soup sporadic disclosed with a large OEM manufacturer cooperation matters.

From the above information can be roughly inferred that the Shangtang behind the 100 million-dollar depot, is the possibility of Honda is very large.

As for the 100 million dollars in the form of cooperation in the end, the Shang Tang Technology co-founder Xu Bing in Everbright holding the 20 anniversary of the celebration party said: "The cooperative depot to our large number of data and research and development of funds, to do together unmanned, this is our current profitable business, We made a profit when most of the drone companies were still burning investors ' money. ”

Who is the big giant behind the merchant soup C-round financing.

In an interview with Reuters, Shangtang said that the end of the year will be the completion of the C round of financing, and the round of financing, a very interesting news is that a Chinese technology internet giant will participate in this round of financing. Who would it be?

At present, in China's CV start-up companies, the commercial soup and the most serious bite of the two, not only a round round than the financing amount, but also in the mobile phone market to compete fiercely.

According to reliable information, in the latest round of mobile phone preemption competition, Shangtang got the oppo phone brush face orders, its income in tens of millions of levels above.

These two CV industry's Super Unicorn, now has begun to line up.

Just in the early November, the technology announced the completion of the 460 million U.S. dollar C-round financing, the investment party includes Ant gold clothing.

Since the Ali team has been courted, the rumor will be in the C round of the investment in the commercial soup technology internet giant is Tencent?

September 8, Tang and MA in Tsinghua University, a wonderful duel is worth pondering, to see the confrontation between the two (irrelevant content slightly cut):

Tang:

The success rate of entrepreneurship in foreign countries may be only 5%, the probability of bigger is 1 per thousand, one out of 10,000, but in China, it has to be reduced by 10 times times.

In front of Google, Facebook, behind a group of small companies to think about how the cottage, the top of the (BAT) three mountains (laughter), this three-point situation, in fact (entrepreneurs) have been very difficult to have the opportunity. In fact, the pressure is very big, we have to go to the stage early.

In fact, there is no such phenomenon in foreign countries, it is impossible to say you and Google do something, you can not cooperate with Microsoft, you can no longer cooperate with IBM, there is no such a truth. In China it is basically such a situation. From our point of view, we are very willing to work with everyone (BAT, etc.).

Ma

(BAT) has also produced some relatively bad competition, so that some entrepreneurs reluctantly to the group, accepted the investment that is not.

Tang:

Now the industry's reputation for Tencent is very good. Tencent's company's survival rate is also relatively high, and most independent development, not all to eat in.

A lot of companies come to us and say, I'm here to buy you. I said the problem is that after you buy us out, we die, we have no incentive to work again. We still have to win together.

Ma

We've been thinking about it, including some of us complaining that it's not going to do that, and I said, ' Yes, just don't do it, you want to go out on your own. If you can win the foreign competitors, I can vote for you.

So, we are trying to do our best to play our own core advantages of the field, all the others to the ecological partners.

In this confrontation, two people you come to me, the tacit understanding is full.

In fact, Tencent on the CV is not bad, it has excellent map lab and AI Lab, especially excellent map. Whether it is published in the paper, or in the landing application every day p figure, are very powerful.

Whether it will be Tencent.

There's a good chance.

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