Chapter 238 Impact and Follow-up
“Baidu is finished.”
This time Li Haide came to Johor, Malaysia, Lu Qi came with him.
Lu Qi is a veteran in the search engine field. He joined Yahoo a long time ago to do search engine-related business, including jumping from Yahoo to Microsoft, where he was also responsible for Bing.
After Lu Qi joined the company, he has been responsible for building the entire artificial intelligence team. As the vice president in charge of the artificial intelligence business, he naturally pays close attention to the trends in the field of artificial intelligence.
So when he invested in Alpha Technology this time, Lu Qi couldn't escape no matter what.
After learning about Alpha Technology’s final shortlist, Lu Qi immediately came to a conclusion.
“Maybe Bing can still have a place in the field of analytical search engines by combining it with GPT, then Baidu’s main business will have no room for improvement.
Wen Xinyiyan maybe It will not be worse than the generative dialogue of other domestic artificial intelligence companies, but Baidu’s operations team and overall execution are not enough to support them in winning this battle
Not to mention, generative artificial intelligence. This itself will be a very niche market, and it will also differentiate into different types of generative artificial intelligence," Lu Qi said with emotion.
He was the CEO of Baidu before, claiming that he was going to change Baidu's blood, but in the end he was replaced.
Although it was a friendly breakup on the surface, everyone knows that it was because Baidu was unable to adapt to the changes brought by Lu Qi, which led to the two parties parting ways.
Lu Qi has no feelings for his colleagues who worked together at Baidu, but he still has feelings for Baidu.
In other words, he has feelings about killing Google. From Yahoo to Bing to Baidu, he has tried almost everything.
All failed.
Unexpectedly, at the end of his career, he would still see technology companies like Hornbill launching an attack on Google by relying on their technology and product advantages.
“Baidu won’t fall so soon, right?” After hearing what Lu Qi said, Li Haide showed a trace of confusion on his face, “Baidu failed to be shortlisted, and Hornbill’s entry into the Chinese market should not be smooth.
For a giant like Baidu, Yanjing should be trying to protect it, and they won’t let Hornbill in so easily, right?”
Li Haide is a photovoltaic person, and he is very concerned about the government. The relationship with enterprises is more about protection and support, because in the early days of photovoltaic, the government's subsidies to photovoltaic manufacturers were unprecedented.
Lu Qi’s thinking is more Internet-oriented. He knows very well that the importance of Baidu is not that important:
"If it were just us, Baidu might be able to survive for a while. After all, we have no idea of getting involved in the search engine.
But you have to know that there is also Goose Factory, which has never given up on the search engine business. Goose Factory has never given up on the search engine business. After acquiring Sogou, the company has been sparing no efforts to support Sogou.
Built Sogou into Goose-based applications such as WeChat, Zhihu, and Pinduoduo in order to increase Sogou's market share.
In terms of mobile content ecology, Goosechang was surpassed by Byte. Text-heavy content began to be inferior to Douyin’s short videos and Xiaohongshu’s combination of pictures and text.
Goosechang’s comparison. The desire to grab the attention of users, especially young people, is very strong. After successfully becoming shareholders of Alpha Technology, they will definitely find ways to cooperate with Alpha and introduce Hornbill into the ecology of Goose Factory
With Goose Factory behind the public relations operation, Baidu cannot resist it on its own. ”
Lu Qi is not optimistic. Not only is he not optimistic, the capital market also voted with his feet. After the results came out, the stock price of Goose Factory in the Hong Kong stock market rose by 11 percentage points, while Baidu fell by 17 percentage points. .
The market generally believes that Baidu is out of business, and it is even more impossible to rely on the search engine field to revive.
The entire field of artificial intelligence is still making rapid progress this year, and there are a lot of news surrounding artificial intelligence. With the birth of new applications, many artificial intelligence companies have declined and many have emerged.
The field of artificial intelligence is increasingly like the rise of the Internet in the 1990s, with rapid updates.
In order to maintain their leading position in the field of science and technology, or at least create the illusion of this, Amerikan has hyped up its achievements in the field of artificial intelligence.
From the perspective of discerning people, the truly explosive news in the field of artificial intelligence this year is the emergence of Hornbill.
Although Hornbill embodies more breakthroughs in search engine optimization and encryption algorithm cracking, the degree of artificial intelligence is insufficiently reflected.
However, the industry believes that with the backing of Samad, a master in the field of algorithms, Hornbill, as a ToC application, will increase its intelligence very quickly after the scale of data is accumulated.
Lu Qi agrees with this view. He is a more academic management and has always followed the latest academic trends. When he was working at Baidu, he would personally attend and listen to artificial intelligence conferences almost every year. Listen to some of the latest lectures.
Therefore, Lu Qi has a clearer understanding of Samad's R&D capabilities. He knows that after Hornbill accumulates data, its products will evolve very quickly.
For Baidu, Hornbill has not officially entered the Chinese market, and the market has already given their search engine business a death sentence.
The Hong Kong stock market can drop 17 points in one day, which is a bit optimistic to describe it as a "death slow".
For Baidu, autonomous driving is another area in which it is developing its efforts. The market also does not believe that they can achieve anything.
In the field of autonomous driving, Baidu’s competitor is Huazi. Their only advantage is the data accumulated by Baidu Maps, but can this data really widen the generation gap? Can't do it.
Like Huawei, they stand on the shore and build cars themselves. Baidu's entire organization is inferior to Huazi in terms of mobility, manufacturing experience, and supply chain management capabilities.
A variety of factors add up and the entire capital market is unprecedentedly pessimistic about Baidu.
I think Baidu is the next Yahoo if it is better, and it is the next Shanda if it is almost.
“According to the Wall Street Journal, Malaysian artificial intelligence company Alpha Technology (Alpha) has completed its first round of financing, with a valuation of up to US$50 billion. New investors include Blackstone, Temasek, Goose Factory and other domestic and foreign investors. Leading companies.
In addition to the above-mentioned financial institutions and Internet companies, there is another investor that has attracted the attention of the outside world, and that is Guangjia Aerospace (LA) from China.
The financing decision made by Mr. Samad, the founder of Alpha Technology, has been speculated by the outside world. Alpha Technology will cooperate with Guangjia Aerospace in the field of artificial intelligence.
At present, this speculation has not been confirmed, but the market response has been enthusiastic. After the A-share market opened, Guangjia aerospace concept stocks experienced a general rise. Among them, robot-related companies saw an astonishing increase, just because the outside world believed that Guangjia aerospace concept stocks rose sharply. The collaboration between Aerospace and Alpha Technologies around artificial intelligence will be related to robotic intelligence. After the completion of this round of financing, it also means that the company will have the support of giants from the world's mainstream economies, and its lineup can be described as strong. The market is generally worried that under the impact of Alpha Technology’s flagship product Hornbill, traditional search engine manufacturers will not be able to maintain their original market”
The response in China has been strong because the user experience of Hornbill is so good that it has The circle-breaking reaction is gradually beginning to occur. Does this round of financing mean that Hornbill will enter China openly? Chinese netizens are very concerned about the follow-up progress. "Baidu and Putian have cooperated for so many years, and they are finally going to get their revenge." Already? Goose Factory hurry up and introduce Hornbill into the country. We will immediately support you as the new search engine oligarch! ”
"Baidu is dead. I have always disliked Baidu. You guys can run such an interesting community like Tieba to death because you are a group of talented people who cannot afford to finish it off early.
The era of mobile Internet relies on search engines to survive , in the era of artificial intelligence, you still want to rely on search engines? Fortunately, Hornbill makes you unable to survive."
"I am now curious about how Alpha Technology can cooperate with Light Armor Aerospace, if there are 100,000-level ones. I will definitely support a wave of home robots.
Guangshen said that he will build a car with Musk. It will take at least three years to build a car. Three years is too long to wait, so it is better to build a commercial robot first. It’s more realistic to pull it out to open everyone’s eyes.”
“If you ask me, God of Light should send the space station to the sky as soon as possible. The spat between Bezos and Musk on Twitter has escalated to, Bezos says Blue Origin will soon provide space station tourism services, Musk debunks the fact that he said it is purely a purchased space station
Guangshen should just engage in space tourism. I don’t want Blue Origin to make any more money, so why not directly operate Guangjia Aerospace? ”
On the Simplified Chinese Internet, once the topic involves Chen Yuanguang, there is a high probability that the conversation will turn to Chen Yuanguang.
No way, this is the charm of the top class.
“Goose Factory and Alpha Technology had a good chat. We had a great time talking about Hornbill’s future business operation cooperation model in China. Goose Factory will use its rich experience in the past to help Hornbill complete the plan for China as soon as possible. The transformation of the Chinese market will help Hornbill enter the Chinese market as soon as possible. ”
“I think that after Hornbill enters the Chinese market, it will have an impact on the entire search engine market. Hornbill is a disruptive innovation for the search engine business. Now the mainstream search engines on the market, such as Google, Neither Bing nor Sogou can compete with Hornbill's product capabilities and product model. ”
"Yes, we are in intensive negotiations with Alpha Technology recently. We plan to cut off Sogou as a whole, and then jointly establish a branch in China with Hornbill to operate Hornbill's business in the entire China region.< br>
As for Sogou’s personnel, we have considered integrating them into the new company as a whole.”
“This is the reality. Under the impact of new technology’s dimensionality reduction, Sogou has no room to survive, and we can barely maintain it. There is no point in its normal operation. It is a waste of resources. The search engine model has a history of nearly 40 years from Yahoo to the present. It is time for a change.
I think it is time. Hornbill appeared at just the right time. The search engine itself is barely able to survive the impact of mobile applications. If Hornbill is not affected, mobile applications will not only not impact it, but will also become its nourishment.”
“The entire search engine industry. We should reflect on why this kind of disruptive innovation was made by a start-up company. We did not imply that Baidu, I mean students in Sogou’s business sector should reflect on it.”
When the person in charge of the Goose Factory was interviewed by Caixin, he didn't mention Baidu once, but after reading it, you will feel that every sentence is mocking Baidu for not being good enough.
For Baidu, lies will not hurt people, the truth is the sharpest knife. Baidu does face the risk of being replaced by Hornbill, and Baidu is well aware of this.
Faced with an almost unfavorable environment from public opinion, secondary markets, competitors, etc., Robin, who had not been seen for a long time, even came out to be interviewed in person, expressing his views on Hornbill and his optimistic and positive views on Baidu's future. .
Even if Robin personally takes action, he cannot save the fact that the capital market votes with his feet and Baidu's stock price accelerates its decline.
After this round of competition, Baidu is the biggest loser, and Goose Factory and Guangjia Aerospace are one of the winners. Goose Factory’s response is to cooperate with Alpha Technology to bring down Baidu. What the outside world is more curious about is Guangjia Aerospace What are the benefits of spaceflight?
"Mr. Lin, this time I went to Malaysia. After becoming a financing target, we were allocated 2.5% of the shares. Based on the valuation of US$50 billion, we need to pay US$500 million to Alpha Technology." Lu Qi returned to Shenhai , report the harvest to Lin Jia as soon as possible.
"Okay, get ready to go through the process. Let the company's legal affairs and lawyers review the contract. After the process is completed, let the finance department complete the payment." Lin Jia did not hesitate at all. She knew very well that this was a left-hand move. Right hand.
Of course, even if she is not right-handed, she will not hesitate when faced with such a high-quality project.
“In addition, after we became a financing target, Mr. Samad conducted a round of dialogue with each financing target one by one.” Lu Qi said.
Lin Jia asked curiously: "In person or on the phone?"
Lu Qi: "On the phone, Mr. Samad seems to be particularly concerned about personal privacy."
"Oh, keep talking."
"I don't know that Mr. Samad chats with other people." What did we talk about, but when we chatted with me, we talked about the application of artificial intelligence in the field of robotics very in-depth and gave me some good ideas.
I said at the time that we could work with Alpha Technology. Cooperate and do some joint research and development projects in the field of artificial intelligence," Lu Qi said.
Lin Jia nodded: "No problem, you have this authority for matters related to artificial intelligence research and development."
Lu Qi said: "Well, after hearing about it, Samad suggested that we can jointly build a humanoid intelligent robot."
Lin Jia suddenly became interested: "Humanoid robot? I I think it is possible, but what is the significance?
Did Samad tell you about the application scenarios of building such a humanoid robot?
Family nanny or military conflict? ?”
Lu Qi smiled bitterly: “Mr. Lin, what you said is too difficult.
At present, in the field of AI + robots, even multi-modal imitation learning has not been completed. If we join forces, the initial purpose is to build a robot that can complete actions like a human.
Let it have common sense of human physics and the ability to move and operate in a general environment. Only by solving these two basic problems can we talk about its use.
And for the light armor system, humanoid robots in space and on earth are definitely two different things.
There will be a paradox here, that is, to train it to acquire common sense of physics on Earth, its attempts to go to space will in turn become obstacles.
Mr. Samad said that he can solve this problem so that the robot can truly have the ability to learn quickly and have a general paradigm to solve this problem. ”
(End of this chapter)