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>>>/qresearch/14112339 Bill Gates met with a group of Chinese tech startups in 2014
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In summer 2014, Microsoft founder Bill Gates met a group of Chinese tech startups during a trip to Beijing and one company, in particular, caught his eye. He remarked the new startup as โvery coolโ after being given a product demonstration tour.
That company was DeepGlint, an artificial intelligence (AI) computer vision startup, which claimed to study the structure of the human eye to provide 3D image analysis and pattern recognition technologies. Its products included smart sensors, recognition systems, and cloud computing.
DeepGlint has been hailed by many as an AI pioneer since its establishment in April 2013. Founder Zhao Yong, a PhD from Brown University in the U.S., was one of the seven designers who took part in the augmented-reality eyewear Google Glass project. The companyโs CEO, He Bofei, attended Stanford and had served as a senior executive at several big-name firms, such as Procter & Gamble and Beijing Hualian Group.
In 2014, DeepGlint generated a further buzz with a recruitment post that boasted its lineup of talented employees. โOur people are made up of graduates from Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Peking University and Tsinghua University. Our engineersโ background is even more stellar, from companies such as Google, Nvidia, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent,โ said the post.
Fast forward to 2019, DeepGlint is now a long way from its past glory and struggles to keep pace with its Chinese rivals. The company is currently valued at USD 540 million, Zhao told 36kr in a recent interview, a lower value when compared with its four main competitors โ SenseTime, Megvii, Yitu, and CloudWalk โ all of which reportedly have a valuation of above USD 2 billion.
The downfall of DeepGlint came as a surprise for observers, as just five years ago the company was riding high on a wave of national interest in the development of AI, and had investments from the likes of Sequoia Capital, ZhenFund and Ceyuan Ventures.
The AI hunger
With a 1.4 billion-strong population, China provides an ideal testbed and a pipeline for data-hungry AI algorithms. Companies like SenseTime quickly placed its AI technology and applications in smart cities, video analysis, and auto driving, while other firms such as Megvii developed facial recognition tech used in public security and mobile payment.
From 2010 to May 2017, Chinaโs AI sector reported 2,218 cases of fundraising totaling RMB 66.8 billion (USD 9.5 billion), according to research firm Zero2IPO. In 2015 alone, the sector hit a record of 719 fundraising cases, a surge of 156% year-on-year.
https://kr-asia.com/deepglint-once-a-promising-chinese-ai-pioneer-is-currently-struggling-to-regain-its-glory
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