Exclusive article by China's well-off network.
Text|"Xiaokang", reporter of China's well-off network, Zhao Dina.
As a dazzling "pearl" of the Oriental Silicon Valley, China Sound Valley has completed the extension from intelligent voice technology and industry to a new generation of information technology and industry such as artificial intelligence after more than 10 years of construction since the start of construction in 2012, realizing the transformation from the initial gathering of industries to industrial clusters.
Hefei High-tech Zone is the core bearing area of China's Sound Valley, and the words "China Sound Valley" can be seen everywhere in the core position of the High-tech Zone, which has been deeply integrated into the development of the High-tech Zone. "China Sound Valley" is a national-level intelligent speech and artificial intelligence industrial base jointly built by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the people of Anhui Province. The intelligent voice industry cluster built on the basis of China Sound Valley is the only national advanced manufacturing cluster in Anhui Province.
As a dazzling "pearl" of the Oriental Silicon Valley, China Sound Valley has completed the extension from intelligent voice technology and industry to a new generation of information technology and industry such as artificial intelligence after more than 10 years of construction since the start of construction in 2012, realizing the transformation from the initial gathering of industries to industrial clusters. According to the 2023 Anhui Provincial Work Report, there are more than 2,100 enterprises in China's Sound Valley Park, with an operating income of more than 300 billion yuan.
On September 20 this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the people of Anhui Province signed the "Memorandum of Cooperation on Further Jointly Promoting the High-quality Development of China's Sound Valley" at the opening ceremony of the 2023 World Manufacturing Conference, opening the third round of ministerial and provincial cooperation. In the next five years, the ministry and the province will accelerate technology research and development, product innovation, promotion and application in the fields of basic software, industrial software, intelligent voice and artificial intelligence, further deepen the cooperation and co-construction mechanism between the ministry and the province, aim at the goal of one trillion yuan, and continue to promote the high-quality development of China's sound valley.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
from 0 to 1".
The development of China's sound valley in Anhui can be traced back to the development of Science Island in the 60s of the last century and the southward relocation of the University of Science and Technology of China in the 70s, which built an important pole of Anhui's innovation and development in the next 50 years, and are also two important forces leading the development of artificial intelligence in Anhui. The relevant person in charge of the Management Committee of Hefei High-tech Zone introduced to the reporter of "Xiaokang" magazine and China's Xiaokang Network.
When it comes to China's sound valley, we have to mention iFLYTEK. It can be said that it is the starting point of China's sound valley. Relying on the R&D achievements of the University of Science and Technology of China in the field of speech technology, iFLYTEK has been engaged in the research of core technologies such as intelligent speech, natural language understanding, and computer vision since its establishment, maintaining the international cutting-edge technology level, and actively promoting the implementation of artificial intelligence products and industry applications. In July 2010, Hefei High-tech Zone was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology to become the only high-tech industrialization base with intelligent voice as the theme in China.
Based on iFLYTEK's first-mover advantage in the core technology of intelligent voice, at the beginning of 2012, Anhui Province took the development of the voice industry as an opportunity and driving force for the development of Anhui's industry, and made many reports to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In August of the same year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Anhui Province signed the "Memorandum of Cooperation on Jointly Promoting the Development of the Voice Industry in Anhui Province", which clearly stated that the Ministry and the province would set up a special voice project to provide strong policy and financial support for the development of the intelligent voice industry in Anhui Province, and formally established a working mechanism for the cooperation between the Ministry and the province to jointly promote the development of the voice industry in Anhui Province.
In August 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued a document to establish a ministerial and provincial project leading group, establish an industrial development promotion mechanism, and build the country's first ministry-provincial cooperation project - China (Hefei) Intelligent Voice Industry Base, with the goal of building a world-class and domestic largest voice industry base guided by voice technology, integrating R&D, production, sales and service. In June 2014, the construction of China (Hefei) International Intelligent Speech Industrial Park in Hefei High-tech Zone officially started. In January 2015, the "Hefei 2015 Work Report" proposed to "accelerate the construction of China's Sound Valley", which was the first time that "China's Sound Valley" was written into the first document. Since then, China Sound Valley has gradually gained more and more widespread recognition.
The development of China Sound Valley in the first three years was mainly to build platforms, build carriers, and string chains. In 2016, countries around the world have raised the development of artificial intelligence industry to a national strategic level, and China has also raised artificial intelligence as a national strategy. In September 2017, Anhui Province issued the "Several Policies to Support the Construction of China's Sound Valley", supporting 800 million yuan of special funds to support the development of China's Sound Valley enterprises every year, and establishing a special project of 5 billion yuan to support the construction of China's Sound Valley. With the support of special policies and finance, China Sound Valley has become the most attractive national industrial base for the artificial intelligence industry in China. Since then, China Sound Valley has accelerated the docking with universities at home and abroad, introduced core technologies and talents, expanded the application field of artificial intelligence, and formed four basic technology platforms of intelligent speech (iFLYTEK), intelligent semantics, intelligent computing, and intelligent writing around 2018, and built an online and offline intelligent marketing platformAnhui's first manufacturing center supporting the development of AI industry was put into use. In the same year, China Sound Valley formulated its second five-year plan, the "China (Hefei) Intelligent Speech and Artificial Intelligence Industrial Base (China Sound Valley) Development Plan (2018-2025)", which guided its next development.
With the deepening of cooperation between ministries and provinces and the improvement of industrial ecology, China Sound Valley continues to "move forward at a high speed". In the three years from 2019 to 2021, the number of enterprises and revenue in China Sound Valley increased by more than 30% annually, and the "Double Thousand Goal" was successfully completed in 2020, with 1,423 enterprises settled in 2021 and a revenue of 137.9 billion yuan, which was 329 times and 212 times. In July 2021, the "Opinions of the Communist Party of China on Promoting the High-quality Development of the Central Region in the New Era" proposed to support the construction of China's Sound Valley, and the development of China's Sound Valley was elevated to a national strategy.
Since its construction, China Sound Valley has won more than 10 national honors, established the country's first ministry-provincial cooperation mechanism to jointly promote industrial development, approved the country's first Chinese brand of industrial brand, and pioneered the provincial special support policy named after the industrial park, which was successively approved as a provincial intelligent voice major emerging industrial base in 2015 and approved in 2019 A national artificial intelligence industry cluster, the National Intelligent Voice Innovation Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was approved in 2021, and the National Advanced Manufacturing Cluster (Intelligent Voice Cluster) of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was approved in 2022. At present, Hefei High-tech Zone is applying for a famous software park in China, and the brand of "China Sound Valley Quantum Center" has been well-known all over the world.
Dazzling Pearl As a dazzling "pearl" of the Oriental Silicon Valley, China Sound Valley has completed the extension from intelligent voice technology and industry to a new generation of information technology and industries such as artificial intelligence after more than 10 years of construction since the start of construction in 2012, realizing the transformation from industrial initial gathering to industrial clusters. Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
Industrial agglomeration has started to "accelerate the run".
The rapid growth of industrial scale, the continuous improvement of innovation ability, the rapid gathering of high-end talents, and the significant improvement of brand influence ......China's sound valley has played a strong voice in the industry;iFLYTEK, Zhongke Brain, Inference Technology, Huami Technology, Loongson Zhongke ......Among the more than 2,100 enterprises in the park, industry leaders abound.
As the "head goose", iFLYTEK has grown up with China Sound Valley for many years. According to the 2023 semi-annual performance forecast released earlier, iFLYTEK is expected to achieve operating income of 7.8 billion yuan and gross profit of 3.1 billion yuan in the first half of the year. Among them, the second quarter performed well, with positive growth in revenue, gross profit and cash flow.
Liu Qingfeng, chairman of iFLYTEK, once said: "Whoever can embrace the wave of artificial intelligence will have more prominent voice and comparative advantage in the global industrial chain." "By building an open platform for technical capabilities and leading industry technological innovation and application development, iFLYTEK has attracted a number of upstream and downstream enterprises centered on it to build an AI industry ecology that integrates and develops large and medium-sized enterprises. In 2010, iFLYTEK released the iFLYTEK Open Platform, an open AI platform with intelligent voice and human-computer interaction as the core, to provide developers with one-stop AI solutions. As of June 30, 2023, the iFLYTEK artificial intelligence open platform has gathered 49740,000 developers, with a growth rate of 45% in the past yearThe number of applications is 17250,000, a growth rate of 13 in the past year7%。After the release of the iFLYTEK Xinghuo cognitive model, the threshold for developers has been greatly reduced, and even if you do not have professional development capabilities, you can join the ecosystem. The AI Spark Camp ecology and the Spark Assistant Program of the iFLYTEK Open Platform allow more creative and imaginative partners to join the iFLYTEK Open Platform and prosper together.
In the "Action Plan for Accelerating Scene Innovation and Building an Integrated Market for Application Scenarios in the Province (2023-2025)" previously issued by the Anhui Provincial Department of Science and Technology, it is proposed to build a world-class voice interaction scene highland. Guide and support "China Sound Valley" enterprises to carry out technological innovations such as machine voiceprint diagnosis, human body voice diagnosis, and semantic understanding, build open platforms for speech, brain-like intelligence technology and application platforms, and open platforms for natural language processing, focus on manufacturing, medical care, education, finance and other fields, form intelligent voice solutions with Anhui characteristics, and improve the "AI+AK" (artificial intelligence + information technology application innovation) ecological chain.
In today's China Sound Valley, artificial intelligence technology has been fully rolled out, empowering thousands of industries. A total of 290 key enterprises have gathered in the fields of smart office, smart energy, smart education, smart city, smart security, and smart hardware equipmentNew technologies such as intelligent speech, cognitive intelligence, brain-like intelligence, deep learning, image recognition, digital twins, and digital traceability are constantly emerging. In addition to iFLYTEK's remarkable achievements, other companies are not far behind. For example, the intelligent inspection system developed by Zhongke Brain-like uses brain-like multi-modal and small-sample learning technology to provide intelligent transformation solutions for the power systemThe X-Brain platform integrates core technologies such as active learning, perceptual computing, and digital twins, and the related algorithms have won the TOP3 in the first Global Algorithm Best Practice Model Competition. At present, Soundvalley has participated in the formulation of more than 120 international and domestic standards, has more than 30,000 intellectual property rights, successfully developed more than 2,000 intelligent voice and artificial intelligence software products, and more than 100 first (set) intelligent innovative products have entered the marketThe fields of smart chips, smart transportation, smart industry, and smart medical care are growing rapidly, which are highly consistent with the strategic emerging industries that are currently being focused on development, and the effect of empowering the industry has initially appeared, and the future development potential is huge.
At the same time, China's Sound Valley is also facing many challenges. The relevant person in charge of the Management Committee of Hefei High-tech Zone pointed out that first of all, the cultivation of leading enterprises needs to be strengthened, and the leading role of leading enterprises in the industry needs to be improved. Secondly, the construction of high-level innovation platforms needs to be strengthened, and the number and coverage are insufficient. Breakthroughs in key core technologies in the field of artificial intelligence require the support of high-level platforms and a large amount of capital investment, and the ability of China Sound Valley to undertake the "bottleneck" key technology breakthrough task in the field of artificial intelligence is still insufficient. Thirdly, the introduction and training of high-level talents needs to be strengthened, and there is still a large gap in high-end talents in short supply such as architects and artificial intelligence algorithm engineers. At present, the work of scenario innovation is still limited to localities, and there are not many opportunities for enterprises to participate in scenario innovation outside the region, especially the opportunity to participate in the construction of major cross-regional scenarios at the national level. In this regard, I hope that China Sound Valley can get more support. It not only increases the support for key 'stuck neck' technology research and major original technological innovation, but also supports the construction of high-level innovation platforms and the declaration of national-level specialized and special new enterprises. In addition, 'attracting investment and talents' is still a key move in the construction of China's Sound Valley, and it is hoped to increase support for 'double recruitment and double introduction' in the field of artificial intelligence. It is also expected to further open up provincial and municipal scene innovation resources, implement a number of major scene innovation projects in the form of 'unveiling the leader', and continue to promote the revision and improvement of China's special policies for Sound Valley." The person in charge said.
"Six major upgrades" to help high-quality development.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the development target of China's sound valley is 500 billion yuan. In the new era and new context, China Sound Valley will strive to basically build an innovative and innovative highland for the intelligent speech and artificial intelligence industry with international influence by 2025By 2027, an industrial cluster that radiates Anhui, integrates the Yangtze River Delta, serves the whole country and maps the world will be built. As the core area of China's Sound Valley, Hefei High-tech Zone has always attached great importance to the construction of Sound Valley, vigorously promoted the agglomeration and development of artificial intelligence, network security, quantum information and other industries, and continued to promote the improvement of energy level around the overall goal of construction, helping China's Sound Valley to reach a new level.
First, the upgrading of industrial cultivation capabilities. The first is to strengthen information management capabilities. Relying on the regional economic brain of Hefei High-tech Zone, improve the big data support platform of Sound Valley, realize the functions of information collection of stock enterprises, capture of potential enterprises, evaluation and analysis of enterprises, and performance analysis of policy support funds of Sound Valley, and realize the integration of the "four chains" of industrial chain, innovation chain, talent chain and first-class chain of stock enterprises in Sound Valley High-tech Zone. The second is to give full play to the ability of various investment resources. Give full play to the resource service capabilities of third-party institutions such as alliances, associations, and think tanks, rely on the industry resource integration capabilities of key enterprises, and seize the opportunity of major events such as the World Manufacturing Conference, the National Cyber Security Activity Week, and the iFLYTEK 1024 Developer Festival to plan the implementation of high-quality projects. The third is to improve the ability of enterprise and project management. Formulate the management measures and project evaluation plan of the sound valley enterprises in the high-tech zone, implement hierarchical management of the enterprises in the sound valley high-tech zone, and form a directory of core enterprises and affiliated enterprisesThe policy review adopts the mode of "enterprise evaluation and analysis + expert review", mainly quantitative indicators, establishes a scientific evaluation system, and improves the accuracy of policy support.
Second, the speed of scientific and technological innovation has been upgraded. The first is to speed up the construction of the platform. Accelerate the construction of innovation platforms such as the Provincial Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, the Data Space Research Institute, and the Cyberspace Security Research Institute (in preparation), and strengthen the supply capacity of source innovation. The second is to promote breakthroughs in key core technologies. Focus on key directions such as natural language understanding, machine vision, brain-like intelligence, artificial intelligence Internet of Things, artificial intelligence chips, and data security, encourage enterprises to continue to promote breakthroughs in original technological achievements, continue to seize the technological highland, and use the underlying technological advantages to cultivate the soil for industrial development. The third is to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements. Comprehensively sort out the scientific and technological achievements to be transformed in the field of artificial intelligence, select high-quality "seeds" from projects such as the transformation of scientific and technological achievements and the innovation and entrepreneurship of high-level talents, give full tracking support, and cultivate high-quality enterprises in the artificial intelligence industry in the future.
Third, the intensity of scene opening has been upgraded. The first is to actively promote the construction of "Scene Innovation Building". Relying on the Hefei Market Landscape Innovation Center, we will promote the implementation of the "Scene Building", establish a list of scenario innovation opportunities and enterprise capabilities, and regularly carry out activities such as scenario application release, project roadshows, and supply and demand docking. The second is to explore district-level scenario opening and policy innovation. Further open up the application scenarios of the high-tech zone in the fields of government affairs, education, medical care, urban construction, social governance, etc., and improve the supply capacity of scenarios in various fields such as smart office, smart education, smart healthcare, and smart city. The third is to make the "chain high-tech" brand bigger and stronger. Give full play to the role of industry associations, alliances, platforms and other links, regularly organize and hold online and offline element docking activities, smooth business cooperation, technical exchanges, resource sharing, etc., and enhance the ability to guarantee factors in the field of industrial advantages.
Fourth, the ability to supply talents has been upgraded. First, in the introduction of high-end talents, aiming at the gap of high-end talents such as architects and artificial intelligence algorithm engineers, appropriately increasing the share of talents in the field of artificial intelligence in the talent plan, and increasing policy support for high-level talents in the fields of artificial intelligence and network security, so as to further enhance the attractiveness of talent policies. Second, in terms of the introduction of conventional talents, we will connect with relevant enterprises to carry out online and offline special recruitment activities in the field of artificial intelligence, and broaden the recruitment channels and efforts of enterprises in universities, institutes, social organizations, etc.
Fifth, the level of financial supply has been upgraded. The first is the investment aspect. Give full play to the first-class investment resources and social capital forces at all levels, improve the smooth, fast and effective investment response mechanism for the implementation of enterprise projects, and enhance the ability to support investment in key high-quality projects. The second is debt financing. Give full play to the advantages of science and technology financial products such as "China Shenggu Credit Loan", use the investment and loan linkage mechanism of the high-tech zone, strengthen the support of angel loans, gazelle loans, young eagle loans and other financial products to high-quality enterprises, improve the supply capacity of debt financing, and broaden the financing channels of enterprises. The third is listing and financing. Relying on the Listing Office of Hefei High-tech Zone, we will further enhance the support for the listing and financing of enterprises and guide the financing of enterprises in the capital market.
Sixth, the business environment has been upgraded. The first is to strengthen policy publicity. Combined with the various stages of the development of artificial intelligence enterprises, through the "high-tech intelligent policy" platform, special lectures, etc., fully publicize and implement the special policies of Shenggu, provincial and municipal artificial intelligence policies, etc., increase the success rate of high-quality enterprises in declaration, and realize the introduction of policies into high-quality enterprises. The second is to do a good job in guaranteeing major activities. We will continue to hold major events such as the World Sound Expo and the International Intelligent Speech and Artificial Intelligence Product Innovation Competition, actively support enterprises in the field of artificial intelligence to participate in innovation and entrepreneurship competitions such as the China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, "Create China" and "Maker China", and focus on displaying and promoting innovative achievements, investment projects and policies, and continuously enhance the brand influence of China's Sound Valley.
Emancipate the mind, optimize the system, and seize the opportunity. China Sound Valley, which has handed over the "ten-year report card", seeks breakthroughs with innovation and promotes development with application, and the influence and appeal of the industrial ecology continue to be highlighted.
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This article was published in the late December 2023 issue of Xiaokang.