Billions of dollars of companies making strategic investments, looking at what?

Last month I went to Los Angeles to attend the annual meeting of Intel Capital, where the participants were the founders and executives of the companies that Intel invested in, as well as a total of more than 1000 people. During the three-day meeting, I learned a lot of things to share here.

Let's briefly introduce Intel capital. The venture, set up by Intel in 1991, has now invested more than 1000 companies, with a total investment of $11 billion trillion, and the main focus is TMT, which is functionally equivalent to Intel's strategic investment arm. Although Intel has passed the Golden Age, its market value remains close to $200 billion trillion. What is the Big Mac's choice of strategic investment?

Not suspense, see is the investment company can promote the development of Intel's core business. Intel's core business is to make chips, and if the world has more computing needs and more places to chip, Intel's core business has a way forward.

Take a concrete look at the example. I personally more familiar with the hardware companies, see the two days of Intel Capital hardware-type projects, last year, there are Avegant, Ossia, Netspeed Bae and Precision Hawk, these companies have to do in the health field wearable equipment , some do a new type of wireless charging, some do unmanned aircraft, and do virtual reality, the field is very dispersed, but there is a common ground.

First look at the most obvious basis, his family's core product is a smart watch, can detect movement, heartbeat, sweat and skin temperature of four dimensions of information, compared to the same kind of most of the products only detect action has an advantage. Wearable to really go to the public, there needs to be more like basis to provide multi-dimensional information products, as well as relying on multi-dimensional information to provide more personalized and specific services companies. After these companies grow up, they need to deal with the data and the amount of computation is at the current level of 10 times times higher. So you can see that, in addition to Basis,intel parent company also poured a lot of effort in the broad sense of the IoT field, because this is the next mobile internet market, can not be missed.

Look at Avegant, its products are glyph, a main viewing experience of the head-wearing display. The company is also riding the virtual reality of the East wind up, cutting the film is the subdivision of the field. To achieve the ideal virtual reality visual experience, the quality of the source and data are far beyond the current standards, imagine now a frame is just a section of the image, and in virtual reality, a frame of the picture but to complete the entire scene to record all the information, so that the audience from all angles can experience appreciation. Increasing the number of migrations brought about by one dimension is the most significant. Similarly, Intel has moves in the virtual reality market, such as the RealSense depth camera.

Precision Hawk may be more obscure. The company initially looked to be a drone, and the absence of interpersonal skills could help users gather information on large scales, such as the drought in thousands of acres of farmland or the state of oil pipelines, which are the basis for many business decisions. It used to be a satellite collection, particularly expensive, or artificially, inefficient, which has provided a new solution to the development of UAVs in recent years. But the real core competency of Precision Hawk is the ability to analyze a lot of data collected, drones are just tools, and its popularity can collect more business data at lower cost, and then need more computing and analysis.

Overall, Intel Capital wants to invest in companies that can move computing to the next stage, and when they grow into next-generation leaders, Intel will take the lead because of the early layout. The hardware companies mentioned above are the same logic for other enterprise-class software and large data-processing companies.

The general direction is certain, but there will be details to be considered in concrete implementation. For example, do we have to ignore the return on investment altogether? Before I talked to a friend of Tencent's investment department, he said that he didn't have to think about it, or even how much money he had to throw every year without specific rules. What about Intel? One VP of the answer is, still have to consider, the investment department is a department of the company, if the loss of money, what do you think?