After 30 years of development and construction, Suzhou Industrial Park has now become a "rich mine" in the AI industry. Among the recently announced 2024 Nobel Prize science awards, artificial intelligence (AI) has undoubtedly become the biggest winner: the physics prize and th

2024-11-30 15:29:05 entertainment 7304℃

Suzhou Industrial Park has been developed and constructed for 30 years.

It has now become a "rich mine" in the AI industry.

In the recently announced 2024 Nobel Prize in Science, artificial intelligence (AI) has undoubtedly become the biggest winner: the Physics Prize and the Chemistry Prize. Both are awarded to scientists in the field of AI. The rapid rise and huge influence of AI on the global scientific research stage has once again refreshed public awareness.

is the core of a new round of technological revolution, and AI has also become the focus of competition in many places in China. When talking about the most popular cities for AI, you may immediately think of Beijing, Shenzhen or Shanghai, which bring together a number of top artificial intelligence companies and research institutions. Among these cities, Suzhou has chosen a more pragmatic development path: relying on the thirty years of development accumulation of Suzhou Industrial Park and taking advantage of Sino-Singapore cooperation, it has cultivated a high-quality business environment and attracted a large number of foreign investment in manufacturing and high-tech industries. technology companies. Today, these have become the best "soil and rich minerals" for "ai+".

In 2017, Suzhou Industrial Park was the first among development zones in the country to propose a complete action plan for the development of the artificial intelligence industry based on its resource endowment and industrial advantages; in 2021, Suzhou City was approved to build a national new generation artificial intelligence innovation pilot zone, Suzhou Industrial Park Become the core area of the experimental area. In 2023, the district's artificial intelligence output value will exceed 100 billion yuan. So far, the district has gathered more than 1,800 related companies and cultivated a total of 20 related listed companies, becoming an important growth pole for the artificial intelligence industry in Jiangsu Province and even the country.

is the operating agency of the Suzhou National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Innovation Pilot Zone. The Suzhou International Science and Technology Park (sispark), established in 2000, is the earliest technology carrier for the development and construction of the Suzhou Industrial Park. There are 21 listed companies, 4 global unicorns, 3 Chinese unicorns, and 4 “national” scientific research institutes. Not only are there a large number of outstanding local entrepreneurial companies, but also Microsoft and Huawei , Cisco and other global top 500 R&D institutions and innovation centers. artificial intelligence technology is the hottest hot spot - the large model track. In sispark companies, 4 vertical large models have been registered, accounting for half of Jiangsu Province.

Suzhou International Science and Technology Park. Picture of this article / sispark provided by

According to Zhang Feng, chairman and president of sispark, adapting to local conditions is the most critical. The park has created a "1+3+n" model featuring "ai+manufacturing", focusing on "ai+medicine", "ai+finance" and "ai+culture and tourism", and demonstrating transportation, government affairs, environmental protection, education, intellectual property and other fields. The artificial intelligence technology application demonstration system promotes the empowerment of artificial intelligence in various industries.

"sispark is not only a technology carrier, but also an ecological empowerment platform." Zhang Feng told China News Weekly, "As the core position of the park to develop artificial intelligence and digital industries, more importantly, we unite ecological partners , allowing more and newer artificial intelligence to create The application of new technologies has turned the carrier into a booster of new productivity.

Deeply cultivates the "test field" of artificial intelligence

The leading conversational artificial intelligence platform company in China-Spichi is a graduate enterprise cultivated by sispark. In the company's conference rooms, there are no microphones. Speakers only need to speak at a normal volume, and the sound can be clearly heard in every corner. The camera will automatically lock on the speaker and simultaneously project the video on the big screen in real time. In the exhibition hall outside the conference room, there is a car model, equipped with a large Spichi voice dialogue model. Based on data in the vertical field, AI can better understand the driver's intentions and quickly recognize the requirement of multiple instructions in one sentence - this also solves the problem. It solves the difficulty of voice dialogue in cars.

Recently, this AI company that takes the lead in building an open innovation platform for Chinese language computing has attracted attention again.

Si Bi Chi is a "veteran" in the field of AI. He settled in sispark from Cambridge, England in 2008 and has experienced several waves and cold winters in the development of the field of artificial intelligence. Now in the era of large models, Spirit has been deeply involved in the field of in-vehicle voice for many years, launched large models in vertical fields, and established cooperation with 60 well-known automobile brands around the world. The compound growth rate of revenue in the past five years has exceeded 50%.

"After settling in sispark, we joined the entrepreneur club organized by sispark, and used this as a link to establish relationships with universities and scientific research institutions in the park such as the Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, National University of Singapore Research Institute, and the Institute for Advanced Research at the University of Oxford. It has formed a bridge for cooperation between industry, academia and research, promoted the technological innovation of our companies, and promoted the development of the artificial intelligence industry in the park," said Gao Shixing, chairman and CEO of Spichi Technology Co., Ltd.

To a certain extent, the growth of sispark is also the epitome of the development of sispark artificial intelligence industry. Zhang Feng joined the Suzhou Industrial Park Management Committee in 2004 and was initially responsible for attracting investment in the manufacturing industry. So far, the park has attracted more than 5,000 foreign-invested companies to settle in. In Zhang Feng’s view, the many foreign-invested companies attracted by the park at that time cultivated industrial chains and talents, which laid the foundation for the subsequent development of the artificial intelligence industry.

As the world's largest automotive technology supplier, the German Bosch Group located its production and R&D center in Suzhou Industrial Park as early as 1999. In 2016, Song Yang, who had worked for Bosch Suzhou for many years, started his own business and established the autonomous driving company Zhixing Technology in Sispark. It was successfully listed in 2023 and was called the "first autonomous driving stock" in Hong Kong stocks.

In 2006, the park clearly launched industrial upgrading and transformation. While introducing foreign investment, it focused on cultivating local technological innovation enterprises. As the industrial foundation of artificial intelligence, software, cloud computing and big data industries are developing rapidly in the park. Zhang Feng remembers that the period from 2007 to 2016 was a critical stage for the formation of the park’s artificial intelligence industry. The park successively introduced Microsoft, Huawei, Cisco and many other domestic and foreign leading companies in the big data, cloud computing, and software industries, etc., and the wave of artificial intelligence Sweeping through, these companies quickly became the backbone of the park's AI development.

On this basis, in 2017, Suzhou Industrial Park seized the opportunity and became the first national-level economic and technological development zone in China that clearly proposed focusing on artificial intelligence and formulating a systematic industrial plan. According to Zhang Feng, since then, sispark has focused on deploying artificial intelligence and digital industries. When conducting research on enterprises, we found that the computing capabilities of small-scale clusters in the past could not adapt to the processing needs of massive data in the AI era. The park government took the initiative to invest in the construction of the Suzhou Supercomputing Center, which will be put into operation in 2020 to provide enterprises with leading domestic supercomputing services. In addition, sispark's public technical service platform system for artificial intelligence and digital industries is improving day by day, including Guoke Data Center, Zhongke Integrated Circuit Design Empowerment Center, it+bt Integrated Innovation Center, etc., which provide services from multiple dimensions. Artificial intelligence technology empowers the real economy and provides strong support.

On September 15, 2024, Suzhou held a promotion conference to fully launch the construction of the "Artificial Intelligence +" innovative development pilot zone, and proposed that the scale of Suzhou's artificial intelligence-related industries should exceed 300 billion yuan by 2027. As the operating agency of the Suzhou National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Innovation Pilot Zone, sispark has once again stood at the forefront of the city's strategic emerging industries.

Suzhou Supercomputing Center.

The "rich ore" of application scenarios

As the construction of the core area of the Suzhou National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Development Pilot Zone continues to deepen, Suzhou Industrial Park relies on a good real economy and a first-class innovation ecology, by continuously releasing application scenarios and soliciting industrial intelligence Transformation needs and solutions, and vigorously promote the close integration of artificial intelligence and the real economy.

So far, sispark has helped the pilot zone release a total of 111 artificial intelligence technology innovation application scenarios, promoted the implementation of 49 of them, selected 50 artificial intelligence benchmark projects, and held 45 open docking activities.

In 2007, Zhang Jihui, a graduate of the National University of Singapore, started his own business and established the "Smart Bud" company. Based on machine learning , computer vision, natural language processing (nlp) and other artificial intelligence technologies, the company is committed to serving global technology companies, universities and Scientific research institutions, financial institutions, etc. provide big data intelligence services, and have become the company with the largest market share in China in the field of global intellectual property information services.

In 2010, Smart Bud was introduced to Suzhou Industrial Park and later settled in sispark. In 2021, it received Series E financing from well-known investment institutions such as Tencent, SoftBank, and Sequoia China, and became a "unicorn" in the enterprise service track. With the boom of large models, Smartya currently has launched large AI models in multiple vertical fields.

For Smart Ya, sispark is an ideal starting point for exploring the Chinese market. The difficulty of commercial application has always been the biggest headache for many AI companies, but in Suzhou Industrial Park, the most indispensable thing is application scenarios. Zhu Yali, general manager of

Smart Bud China, said in an interview with China News Weekly that at that time, the company team found after research that Suzhou Industrial Park and the Yangtze River Delta region where it is located bring together diverse economies such as state-owned enterprises, private enterprises, and foreign capital. There are rich types of industries. In the early days, intellectual property services were still a niche field, but in the past decade, industrial upgrading has seen "domestic substitution of medical devices, industrial upgrading of new energy vehicles, and technological innovation of integrated circuits. These are the best application scenarios for our products."

"Sispark has always been a strong backing for the company." Zhu Yali mentioned that sispark helped the company connect with many customers around the park. Relying on sispark's endorsement, customers are more willing to provide internal R&D data, which helps AI companies go deep into the industry and combine models , providing a more effective intelligence platform. Therefore, the park has also become the first "test field" for many new products of Wisdom Ya after they are launched. "We will polish our products based on the needs of these customers and even use them as benchmarks."

As of June, Smart Bud’s vertical field large models and innovative data have successfully served more than 12,000 customers in more than 50 countries around the world, covering universities and scientific research institutes, biomedicine, new materials, new energy, intelligent manufacturing, More than 50 high-tech industries including communications electronics, new energy vehicles, and semiconductors. "There are more than 700 in Suzhou alone. Customers in one city account for more than 5% of our global customers. This density is very high."

Suzhou has a strong economic foundation and complete industrial categories, and has a good foundation in the integrated application of artificial intelligence. . At the recent "Artificial Intelligence +" Innovation Development Pilot Zone Promotion Conference, Suzhou made it clear that it would give full play to its local advantages of solid industrial foundation and rich application scenarios to promote 15 key areas such as manufacturing, finance, and low-altitude economy. "Artificial Intelligence+". In addition, Suzhou has also specifically and uniquely released the "Suzhou City Measures to Accelerate the Promotion of "Artificial Intelligence + Manufacturing"" specifically for the manufacturing industry, and established an "Artificial Intelligence + Manufacturing" Innovation Application Center.

However, how to further promote AI companies to penetrate into the industry is the direction that the park will focus on in the future. Sispark observed that many AI companies in the park have technologies and products, but it is difficult to find sufficient application scenarios. In particular, AI companies that focus on the industrial field need customized training and development to meet the needs of factories, which undoubtedly requires deep accumulation of industry resources.

"One of the annual tasks of sispark is to help our companies find application scenarios. Based on the experience and corporate resources accumulated over the past many years in serving the real economy such as the manufacturing industry in the park, my colleagues and I carry out supply and demand docking to provide Artificial intelligence companies provide more abundant implementation scenarios and application markets to solve the pain points of enterprise artificial intelligence technology implementation," Zhang Feng said.

Helps Enterprises Go Global

Walking on the streets of Suzhou today, if you look closely, you may encounter a special small truck: it is sky blue, with a rectangular body, no cockpit or driver, and the LED screen at the front of the car displays " Autonomous driving”. The truck's mission is to deliver express delivery, or deliver goods to hotels and supermarkets. When driving, it can calmly avoid pedestrians and vehicles, and can overtake dexterously.

This is an unmanned delivery logistics vehicle from Jiushi (Suzhou) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jiushi Intelligent"), the world's leading L4 level autonomous driving product research and development company. This company has attracted much attention since its inception: founder Kong Qi is a veteran figure in the field of autonomous driving in China.The company settled in sispark in 2021. In less than a year, it set a record for the fastest commercialization in the l4 industry. In June this year, it released new products and sold two years of production capacity in one day. What is the attraction of

sispark to this star company? Zhuang Li, co-founder of Jiushi Intelligent, told China News Weekly that a big reason is that sispark has provided a lot of help for Jiushi Intelligent's successful overseas expansion. In May of this year, Jiushi Intelligent obtained the first unmanned logistics vehicle license in Singapore issued by the Land Transport Authority of Singapore. This is another major progress Jiushi Intelligent has made in developing overseas markets, and it also paved the way for the launch of domestic autonomous driving products overseas. A whole new situation has opened up.

Openness is the distinctive background of Suzhou Industrial Park. As their understanding of and participation in overseas markets deepens, more and more enterprises in the park firmly choose to "go global" and integrate innovation and market resources on a global scale. "sispark pays close attention to the needs of enterprises to 'go overseas' and takes advantage of the park's developed export-oriented economy and complete service system. It relies on the Suzhou Industrial Park Yangtze River Delta Overseas Investment Promotion Center and sispark's newly established cross-border investment department to make two-way efforts to assist enterprises. Better explore overseas markets," Zhang Feng said.

In 2024, going global will be an unavoidable topic for China’s AI industry. Due to the fierce competition in the domestic market, in order to seek new growth points and profit margins, Huawei, Alibaba, iFlytek, etc. have successively launched large AI models overseas.

“The application of artificial intelligence in China is too complicated.” Zhuang Li lamented to China News Weekly. In fact, as early as when choosing the park in 2021, the Jiushi Intelligent team had already included going overseas in the plan. Kong Qi and Zhuang Li have worked in Silicon Valley for many years, and both noticed a general shortage of labor in developed countries and a market demand for automation. This is another consideration for them in choosing the park: it has the cooperation genes between China and New Zealand, the park is open and has a strong international atmosphere, which will help open up overseas markets.

Zhuang Li said that when AI companies go overseas, they usually adopt a "bottom-up" strategy: recruiting overseas business development personnel locally to find demanders who are interested in products, "and they must be strong demanders." Then they are invited to come to China to inspect the product on-site, and then the vehicle is sent to local testing and finally approved by the government. But this process is full of uncertainties. Some vehicles have been delivered to the local area, but they have not passed the government's requirements, and the project has been stuck.

Fortunately, with the help of sispark, Jiushi Intelligent invited officials from the local Enterprise Development Bureau and other departments in Singapore to visit the operation of the smart logistics vehicle. The product was quickly recognized by everyone, and was subsequently recommended to many companies in Singapore. logistics company. Singapore NTUC FairPrice Cooperative (supply chain company) has more than 30 years of experience in supply chain and logistics operations in Singapore. After having an in-depth understanding of Jiushi Intelligent products, it successfully signed a cooperation agreement with Jiushi Intelligent to launch Singapore's first high-level automatic Driving the implementation of urban distribution projects.

This cooperation attracted the attention of relevant government departments in Singapore. Subsequently, Jiushi Intelligence was invited to participate in the revision of Singapore's tr-68 autonomous driving specifications and technical standards, as well as the formulation of a test plan for unmanned logistics vehicles operating on public roads, filling the gap. There is no regulation on the operation of similar vehicles on public roads in Singapore. In May this year, Jiushi Intelligent passed the test and obtained the first unmanned logistics vehicle license in Singapore. The product can drive on designated roads.

In fact, in the three years since 2019, Zhang Feng has participated in cross-border investment services in the park management committee, helping companies invest and build factories in “Belt and Road” partner countries, set up R&D centers overseas, and build overseas headquarters. etc., and are very familiar with the processes and needs of companies going overseas. "We have found that now, regardless of the size of the company, even start-ups, there is a demand for 'going global'." Zhang Feng told China News Weekly that sispark has accumulated many overseas resources over the past two decades, including nine Many companies, including Intelligent Technology, directly "gather groups" to connect with foreign investment resources and promote cooperation.

In addition, Zhang Feng also noticed that the 21 listed companies incubated by sispark also hope to use the funds raised to find and invest in high-quality projects overseas and conduct mergers and acquisitions.In recent years, sispark has been actively looking for suitable investment targets for them. In 2023, sispark will set up a cross-border investment department specifically for this purpose.

In April 2023, Zhang Feng led a number of representatives from technology companies and cooperative investment institutions in Suzhou Industrial Park to hold an exchange meeting in Tokyo, Japan, attracting nearly 50 representatives from Japanese companies and investment institutions. At the meeting, each enterprise promoted cooperation projects. In the past year or so, sispark has promoted more than 30 similar exchange activities, organized nearly 30 investment institutions and corporate delegations, visited the Netherlands, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan and other countries, demonstrating the industrial characteristics of the park and cross-border service capabilities.

sispark organizes companies to participate in the Japan Artificial Intelligence Exhibition.

Zhang Feng said that Suzhou Industrial Park currently has provincial-level overseas investment registration (odi) approval authority, and can self-approval a single project of less than 300 million U.S. dollars, providing enterprises with the implementation of overseas investment-related policies, global channel network resource attraction, high-quality A comprehensive system including project "docking-follow-up-coordination-implementation" and other services.

"Different countries and regions have different capital markets, industrial and commercial taxation, and administrative approval processes." Zhang Feng mentioned that currently, Suzhou Industrial Park has established multiple overseas cooperation projects in international innovation highlands such as Silicon Valley, Boston, Frankfurt, and Tokyo. center, sisp ark also took the lead in setting up the first international business cooperation center in South Korea this year - Suzhou Industrial Park International Business Cooperation Center (Seoul), which provides professional services for cross-border investment and industrial collaboration tailored to technology companies in the park with international needs. Help enterprises cross national borders and "go overseas" steadily. At the same time, these overseas business cooperation hubs around the world, as bridges and ties, enable the park to closely connect overseas cutting-edge technology companies, elite talents and cutting-edge technologies. They not only promote the "introduction" of overseas high-quality projects and high-end talents, but also successfully It has built a new pattern of domestic and international two-way interaction and coordinated development, and truly realized the seamless connection of the two cycles of domestic and foreign markets.

In order to help park enterprises solve financing problems and promote their rapid development, sispark regularly holds special investment and financing project roadshows to build a platform for enterprises to directly connect with investment institutions, banks and other financial institutions. At the same time, sispark accelerates fund layout and is currently a shareholder. There are 23 well-known domestic funds such as Kechuangxing, Jiayu Capital, and Yuanhe Fund, which help companies solve their financing needs and obtain more financial support and cooperation opportunities.

"In the next step, sispark will focus on the development positioning of a 'value-empowering technology industry operator', continuously improve the in-depth service system, optimize the entrepreneurial environment, and continue to build a nest for artificial intelligence and digital industry clusters to attract more talents." The big move is to help the park build an open and innovative world-class high-tech park," Zhang Feng said.