The New Year is approaching, and domestic enterprises are filled with the joyful atmosphere of the annual meeting, but there is an undercurrent abroad.
Microsoft's market capitalization soared, breaking the $3 trillion mark, second only to Apple in the United States. IBM and ServiceNow released their new quarterly financial reports, and Yonyou also released its 2023 performance forecast. SAP, eBay, and Microsoft laid off employees, and Qi Junyuan, the No. 1 position of Feishu's original product, was transferred to the AI department.
In the field of artificial intelligence, last Thursday, the U.S. Federal Commission (FTC) said that it would launch an artificial intelligence investigation into Amazon, OpenAI, etc., and on Sunday, the U.S. Department of Commerce released news that the United States would prevent (Chinese users) from using AWS, Azure and other training AI models.
As for the attitude of domestic software companies towards AI, judging from the sharing of entrepreneurs at the Beijing branch of Cui Niuhui last week, everyone said that they should actively embrace AI in 2024.
Google Cloud has partnered with Hugging Face to engage AI developers
On the evening of January 25, according to Reuters, alphabet IncThe cloud computing division of Google's parent company announced on Thursday that it has entered into a partnership with startup Hugging Face to streamline its AI software development efforts on the Google Cloud platform. The partnership comes on the heels of tech giants such as Microsoft launching generative AI tools for consumer audiences, and through this partnership, Google Cloud will integrate Hugging Face's strengths in the AI open source community and technology to make it easier for developers to build, train, and deploy AI applications on the platform.
With companies such as Microsoft and Alphabet launching generative AI tools for the consumer market, businesses large and small are interested in adopting AI for their own purposes, such as improving existing products or meeting internal needs. The need to optimize AI software for specific tasks and needs led to this collaboration.
Google Cloud eliminates customer data migration fees
Bull Reuters, January 23: Google Cloud this month canceled the fee for customers to transfer data from its cloud platform to other providers or data centers, becoming the first company among major cloud providers to do so.
VMware Announces End of Perpetual License and SaaS Services
Bull Reuters News: On January 22, VMware officially released an article titled "VMware Terminates Perpetual Licenses and SaaS Services".
According to reports, VMware announced that it will no longer provide ARIA SaaS services, but will continue to provide support to existing ARIA SaaS customers until the end of their subscription period. At the end of the subscription period, customers will need to transition to VCF or VVF. It's important to note that the Aria SaaS service is in maintenance mode and no new features are being released, but VMware will provide security and critical updates during the subscription period.
The 1.8 billion transaction was not done, and Weimob terminated the controlling stake in Shanghai Weimob
Bull Reuters News: On the evening of January 21, Weimob announced that it had received constructive feedback from shareholders on the transfer of Shanghai Weimob's equity. "After further evaluation of the potential transaction after considering the views of shareholders, a decision has been made to terminate the potential transaction. The announcement said that no binding agreement has been reached, and the proposed transactions can be counted.
It is understood that last week, Weimob originally planned to make a price of more than 1.8 billion, ** a controlling stake in Shanghai Weimob. However, Weimob soon announced that the company had further evaluated the potential transaction after considering the opinions of shareholders, and after careful consideration, it hereby announced that it had decided to terminate the potential transaction.
Weimob stated that Sun Taoyong, chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of the company, informed the company that he has full confidence in the overall prospects and growth potential of the group, and plans to further increase his shareholding in the company by acquiring the company's shares in the open market in a timely manner with his close associates in accordance with market conditions within 6 months from the date of this announcement, provided that any further increase in shareholding must be carried out in accordance with relevant laws and regulations.
The founder of Weimob Group spent about HK$4.8 million to increase his holdings**
Bull Reuters News on January 25: After the market on January 24, Weimob Group issued an announcement that Sun Taoyong, chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer, was traded in the open market through the entity controlled by yomiSun Holding Limited, to 1HK$94 for a total of 2,454,000 shares of the Company, representing approximately 009%。
After the completion of the increase, Sun Taoyong, the founder of Weimob Group, held a total of 323,599,000 shares of the company, equivalent to 1158%。
On January 21, Weimob Group announced that it would launch a share buyback and management increase plan. After three days, the founder of Weimob Group spent about HK $4.8 million to quickly increase his holdings.
Docusign is rumored to have been bid by two private equity firms
Jan. 25 (Reuters) - Private equity firms Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman are in a bid to buy eSignature platform Docusign, with direct lenders and banks already racing to fund up to $8 billion in debt, reports suggest. According to people familiar with the matter, the two private equity firms are the final bidders for Docusign.
Docusign was one of the pandemic darlings when tech stocks soared in 2021, with a market capitalization of around $12 billion.
With a market capitalization of $3 trillion, Microsoft is the world's second-largest company by market capitalization
Bull Reuters News: On January 24, Microsoft's market capitalization exceeded the $3 trillion mark for the first time, becoming the world's second-largest company by market capitalization, second only to Apple in the United States. However, Microsoft's shares have since retreated to close at 402 per share$56,**0.92% with a market capitalization of 2$99 trillion.
It is reported that since the beginning of this year, Microsoft and Apple have begun to compete for the status of "the largest enterprise by market capitalization". Apple briefly lost the title in early January. Apple shares closed at 194 per share at 24**$5, **035%, with a market capitalization of $3 trillion.
Microsoft's investment in the Open Artificial Intelligence Research Center (OpenAI) is widely seen as a frontrunner in the race for market dominance among tech giants in promoting generative AI. These contenders include companies such as Google's parent company Alphabet, Amazon, Oracle, and Facebook's parent company, Metaverse Platform.
IBM reported fourth-quarter revenue of 173$800 million, up 4% year-over-year
Bull Reuters News: On January 25, IBM released its fourth-quarter 2023 earnings report. According to the report, IBM's fourth-quarter revenue totaled 173$800 million, up 4%, or 3% at constant exchange rates; Software revenue reached 75$100 million, up 3% and up 2% at constant exchange rates.
IBM revenue for the full year 2023 was $61.9 billion, up 2% and up 3% at constant exchange rates. Among them, software revenue increased by 5%.
ServiceNow, a workflow software company, generated 23 percent in Q4 subscription revenue$6.5 billion, up 27% year-over-year
Bull Reuters News: On January 25, workflow software company ServiceNow announced its fourth-quarter results. The earnings report showed that the company's subscription revenue reached 23$6.5 billion, up 27% year-over-year, exceeding 23$200 million expected. Total revenue reached 24$3.7 billion, beating consensus expectations of $24$0.2 billion. Earnings before certain costs, such as compensation, were 3$11, far exceeding market expectations of $2$78. The company's adjusted operating margin was 29%, higher than Wall Street's 275% 。
ServiceNow expects subscription revenue to grow to 105 for the full year5.5 billion to 105$7.5 billion, with a maximum increase of 22%.
Yonyou Network released its 2023 performance forecast: revenue is expected to increase by 5% to 6%, and profit is in the red
Bull Reuters News: On January 26, Yonyou Network released its 2023 performance forecast: the company's total operating income is expected to increase by 5% 6%, cash collection income is expected to increase by more than 10%, the contract signing amount is expected to increase by more than 17%, and the business income of enterprise customers is expected to increase by 7% 8%, the business income of medium-sized enterprises and small and micro enterprises is expected to achieve high growth, the business income of ** and public organization customers is expected to grow negatively, and the company's profit is expected to be in the red.
It is understood that at the beginning of 2023, Yonyou launched a major upgrade of the business organization of large enterprise customers, from the original organization model by region to the organization model by industry, which is the largest business organization change in the history of Yonyou. In addition, in 2021 and 2023, on the basis of the original R&D team of nearly 5,000 people, Yonyou will add more than 2,000 BIP R&D personnel, and increase R&D-related expenses on a large scale, although it has an impact on the company's current profit, it is of strategic significance for the company to establish a world-leading product competitiveness.
[two sentences].
On October 24 last year (2023), Weimob changed its formation, announcing the transformation from a group business group system to a business subgroup system, and officially established three sub-groups: Weimob Enterprise Service, Weimob Marketing, and Weimob International. After less than three months, after announcing a controlling stake of no less than 1.8 billion yuan ** Shanghai Weimob, it urgently changed its tune and terminated it. This announcement, as soon as it was withdrawn, was firmly remembered by the Internet. What is Weimob's move?
Recently, Microsoft's market value has soared, and its biggest "hero" is AI.
SAP announced layoffs of about 8,000 people
Bull Reuters News on January 25: On January 23, local time, SAP announced a major restructuring plan, including laying off about 8,000 employees. As of the end of 2023, SAP has about 1080,000 full-time employees, which means that the restructuring will affect more than 7% of the workforce.
SAP said it expects to end 2024 with headcount "close to current levels" and restructuring charges of around €2 billion (about 15.6 billion yuan), the vast majority of which are expected to be recognised in the first half of 2024.
eBay will lay off about 1,000 people, or 9% of its full-time workforce
Bull Reuters News: According to foreign media, eBay said on Tuesday (January 23) that the company plans to lay off about 1,000 full-time jobs, accounting for 9% of full-time employees.
It is reported that since January 2024, there has been continuous news of layoffs in American technology companies. Amazon, Alphabet and Unity confirmed their layoff plans this month, and SAP said Tuesday that it plans to implement voluntary departures or offer 8,000 employees the opportunity to change jobs as part of its 2024 restructuring plan.
After acquiring Activision Blizzard, Microsoft will lay off 1,900 employees, or nearly 9% of the gaming division
Bull Reuters News on January 26: Microsoft's gaming division will lay off 1,900 people, accounting for about 9% of Microsoft Games' 22,000 employees. It is understood that Blizzard's president, Mike Ybarra, is leaving, along with Blizzard's co-founder and design director, Allen Adham. After the announcement, Microsoft's stock price was basically flat.
Three months ago, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, the company's largest deal ever and more than double the size of its 2016 LinkedIn acquisition. The layoffs were expected, and usually occur after a major M&A deal is completed, the sources said.
As economic pressures mount, tech investors expect greater efficiency and a clearer path to growth or profitability. With 2024 just weeks away, tech companies have made significant layoffs, most of which are not related to mergers and acquisitions. For example, many companies from Tencent's Riot Games to TikTok to Discord have made layoffs. Prior to this, the tech industry had already experienced a layoff in 2023, with more than 100,000 layoffs. Earlier this week, eBay said it would lay off 1,000 employees, while SAP said it would lay off or relocate 8,000 employees. Unlike Microsoft's layoffs, eBay and SAP have seen significant stock prices after announcing the layoffs**.
Feishu changed the No. 1 position of the product, and Qi Junyuan was transferred to the AI department
Niu Reuters News: According to reports, Qi Junyuan, vice president of Feishu products, was transferred to Flow, the AI department of ByteDance, and Tong Yao, the head of Feishu Duowei**, took over the Feishu product department and led the entire product team.
It is reported that Flow is a newly established AI department of ByteDance in November last year, mainly focusing on the AI application layer, and has launched two products in China and overseas, namely Doubao and CICI, with Zhu Wenjia, head of TikTok product technology and head of the large model team, as the business leader.
Qi Junyuan joined Feishu in early 2023, and while in college, he founded TeamBition, which was one of the first collaborative office SaaS products in China. Tong Yao joined ByteDance in 2020. Previously, he was an Ali native and held the position of General Manager of AutoNavi Open Platform. After joining Bytes, Tong Yao led the multi-dimensional ** project.
[two sentences].
In this economic cycle, "layoffs" are not big or small, but only about how far away the company is from the end of its life. The layoffs of small and medium-sized enterprises may lie in the fact that if they do not take this action, the future of the enterprise is unpredictable; The layoffs of large enterprises will have another possibility, just like garden workers who have to prune trees regularly to make them flourish in the coming year.
Feishu has always had a good reputation among users. But after the recent version update, I heard many users complain, saying that it is more difficult to use than before. I don't know if the change of the No. 1 position of this product will bring some new product changes?
Domestic capital markets
Shanjing Intelligence, a data intelligence decision-making company, has received nearly 100 million yuan in Series A financing
Bull Reuters News on January 23: Recently, Mountain View Intelligence, a provider of enterprise data intelligence products and services, announced that it has received nearly 100 million yuan in Series A financing, this round of financing is led by Zhongke Haichuang**, and the financing funds will further accelerate the technology research and development and productization of Mountain View Intelligence in the field of artificial intelligence, especially in the application of large model technology, which is expected to bring disruptive innovation to various industries.
Mountain View Intelligence is a company focusing on data intelligent decision-making, and is committed to providing efficient and intelligent decision-making services for enterprises. Its self-developed large-scale model products, through the establishment of large and complex models, can conduct more in-depth analysis of data and provide enterprises with more accurate decision-making basis. Compared with traditional small models, large model technology can better capture the correlation and trend between data, and provide more comprehensive and global analysis results.
Industrial software company Zhice Technology has received tens of millions of yuan in seed round financing
Bull Reuters News on January 25: A few days ago, Zhice Information Technology (Shanghai)** announced the completion of a seed round of financing of tens of millions of yuan, and the investor is Shunwei Capital. This round of investment funds is mainly used for product research and development and marketing.
Founded in 2021, Zhice Technology is an industrial software company focusing on complex manufacturing and developing artificial intelligence technology, mainly focusing on the application of artificial intelligence in complex manufacturing business scenarios, helping industrial enterprises improve production processes and quickly improve core indicators such as quality, carbon emissions, and production efficiency. The core product of Zhice Technology is the Zhice Industrial Intelligence Platform, which provides intelligent solutions for different industrial problems based on the platform's AI algorithm capabilities and data integration capabilities.
The human resource service platform Jimu Yougong has received tens of millions of yuan in strategic financing
Bull Reuters News on January 23: Recently, the human resources service platform Jimu Yougong announced the completion of tens of millions of yuan in financing, and the investor is Shanghai Jimu Galaxy Digital Technology *** This round of funds is mainly used for the expansion of the business team, and the further development and upgrading of the AI employment model.
Jimu Yougong was established in August 2023 and is located in Shanghai. It mainly provides enterprises with diversified employment consulting and solution services including labor dispatch, outsourcing, crowdsourcing, part-time work, school-enterprise cooperation, etc. At present, its customers are mainly concentrated in blue-collar and gray-collar industries, such as catering, retail and logistics. In terms of products, Jimu Yougong has developed a SaaS system that includes multi-scenario applications such as Party A's enterprise side, employee applet side, human resources company management side, and ecological partners.
Intelligent unmanned system solution provider Zowee Intelligence won 2$500 million Series B financing
Bull Reuters News on January 23: Recently, Beijing Zowee Intelligent Technology announced the completion of 2500 million yuan B round of financing, this round of financing is invested by Zhongguancun Science City Company, AVIC Rongfu, Shaanxi Photon Strong Chain, Guangdong Kaiding, Shenzhen Suiyin and other institutions. The financing funds are mainly used for product research and development, market expansion and production capacity improvement.
Founded in 2015, Zowee Intelligence is a company focusing on providing intelligent unmanned system solutions. At present, Zowee Intelligent has two product lines, one is unmanned equipment, including tethered UAVs, multi-rotor UAVs, vertical fixed-wing UAVs, cruise missiles and other products, of which tethered UAVs are the core products. The products are mainly used in the fields of military industry, emergency rescue, fire protection and energy inspection. Another product line is the establishment of the scientific research brand "Phase One Labs", which cooperates with more than 300 universities and research institutes to provide them with development tools for intelligent unmanned systems, and provides an integrated design and development platform for flight control, visual navigation, cluster collaboration, and intelligent game technology for the R&D, design, and testing of intelligent unmanned systems.
Zhejiang Kecong, a manufacturer of industrial mobile robot control systems, received nearly 100 million yuan in Series A financing
Bull Reuters News on January 25: Recently, Zhejiang Kecong, an industrial mobile robot control system manufacturer, completed nearly 100 million yuan in Series A financing, which was invested by Yuanjing Capital. The financing funds are mainly used to increase R&D investment, accelerate product iteration and improve service quality, strengthen the construction of the company's global marketing network, and expand Kecong's market share in the field of mobile robot control systems.
Zhejiang Kecong focuses on the research and development of standard mobile robot core control systems and software, so that customers can not only reduce the expenditure of mobile robots in design, mass production, implementation, deployment and maintenance through the secondary development of tool chain software, with graphics, low technical capabilities, etc., but also through the integration of the first chain so that customers can build their own products for final delivery and implementation, and perfectly form a first-class relationship with customers, so as to help robots Vendors and integrators deliver fast, efficient and satisfying deliveries to end customers.
Foreign capital markets
Travel management company TR**ELPERK received 1$0.4 billion in financing, led by SoftBank
Bull Reuters News on January 25: Recently, travel management company tr**elperk won 1$400 million in financing to invest in AI development and R&D of new products. The company said Tuesday that the financing was led by SoftBank Vision** 2 and backed by existing investors Kinnevik and Felix Capital. The latest round of funding brings the valuation of tr**elperk to $1.4 billion.
TR**Elperk is a Barcelona-based start-up that automates corporate travel and expense management. It is understood that TR**ELPERK mainly uses AI technologies such as machine learning and neural networks in the background to help automate a lot of the manual tasks involved in corporate travel, such as providing users with the lowest ** for flights and accommodation.
In 2023, startups in London raised more than $12.9 billion in total
Bull Reuters News on January 25: According to the latest data from the London Development Agency and Dealroom in 2023, London startups raised a total of more than $12.9 billion in 2023. London startups raised almost as much in 2023 as the other three European cities (Paris, Stockholm and Berlin) combined. In the global venture capital sector, London ranks fourth.
The report also mentions that the UK has the third largest start-up funding in the world in 2023.
[two sentences].
At the end of the year, domestic enterprises will naturally have fewer actions in investment and financing. It can be seen that the focus of enterprises that get financing will be on the combination of software + AI. This is true for the data intelligence decision-making company Shanjing Intelligence, the human resource service platform Jimu Yougong, or the travel management company TR**ELPERK, which is favored by SoftBank.
In 2024, all enterprises are actively embracing AI and exploring new ways to play "software + AI".
The U.S. will block (Chinese users) from training large AI models with AWS, Azure, etc
On January 28, according to cloud headlines, Biden ** is taking major steps, and the proposed "know your customer" regulations will make it mandatory for U.S. cloud computing companies to verify the identity of foreign users, which will have a significant impact on tech giants such as Amazon's AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Biden** would propose to require U.S. cloud computing companies to determine whether foreign entities are accessing U.S. data centers to train AI models. "We can't allow non-state actors, China, or people we don't want access to our cloud computing systems to train their models," Raimondo said. We have implemented export controls on chips. U.S. cloud computing data centers also make heavy use of chips, and we must also consider shutting down this path that could involve malicious activity. ”
The U.S. Federal Commission launched an AI investigation into Amazon, OpenAI, and others
Bull Reuters, January 26: The Federal Commission (FTC) said on Thursday that it will launch an investigation into the top companies in the field of artificial intelligence, including Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Anthroic and OpenAI.
FTC Chair Lina Khan announced the survey at the AI Technology Summit, calling it a "market survey of the investments and partnerships that have formed between AI developers and major cloud service providers." It is reported that by exercising Section 6(b) of the Federal Commission Act (FTC Act), regulators can investigate AI companies independently of their law enforcement agencies and file civil investigation requests.
Ant Group established NextEvo, the AI innovation arm
Bull Reuters News on January 25: Ant Group has established Nextevo, an AI innovation R&D and application department, internally, headed by Xu Peng, vice president of Ant Group. Peng Xu worked at Google for 11 years, where he was responsible for and led the core technology development of Google Translate and participated in the algorithm development of Google's display advertising system.
It is reported that NextEvo is Ant's internal AI elite department, which undertakes all the core technology research and development of Ant AI, including all the research and development work of Ant Bailing's large model.
Cambrian and Zhixiang Future reached a strategic cooperation and completed the adaptation of large models
Bull Reuters News on January 25: Recently, Cambrian and Zhixiang Future signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Beijing, and the two sides will continue to adapt products through resource sharing, complementary advantages, relying on their respective technology accumulation in the field of large models, and work together to promote the innovation and implementation of visual large models.
It is understood that Zhixiang Future is a generative artificial intelligence startup focusing on building visual multimodal basic models and applications, and has released the Zhixiang multimodal large model, its general creation tool, pixeling, which can provide text generation**, text generation**, editing and other functions.
From the design of the underlying hardware architecture instruction set to the iteration of the basic software, Cambrian has optimized the application scenarios of large models. Based on the efficient inference engine MagicMind, the Cambrian MLU series of cloud-based intelligent acceleration cards support technologies such as variable input and output, high-performance operators, and graph fusion, providing comprehensive support and acceleration for the future application of large models of Zhixiang.
The performance of the Qwen-VL visual understanding model of Tongyi Qianwen has been greatly upgraded
Bull Reuters News: On January 26, Alibaba Cloud announced the research progress of multimodal large models. Tongyi Qianwen visual understanding model QWEN-VL has been upgraded again, following the PLUS version, the MAX version has been launched again, the upgraded model has stronger visual reasoning ability and Chinese comprehension ability, can recognize people, answer questions, create, write**, and obtain good results in multiple authoritative evaluations, comparable to OpenAI's GPT-4V and Google's Gemini Ultra.
Currently, QWEN-VL-PLUS and QWEN-VL-MAX are free for a limited time, and users can directly experience the capabilities of the MAX version of the model on the official website of Tongyi Qianwen and the Tongyi Qianwen app, or call the model API through Alibaba Cloud's Lingji platform (Dashscope).
Intelligent Cloud has reached a strategic cooperation with Samsung in China on the AI ecosystem
Niu Reuters News: According to the intelligent cloud official WeChat, on January 25, at the Samsung Galaxy S24 series new product launch conference, Xu Yuanmo, vice president of user experience strategy of Samsung Electronics Greater China, and Chen Yifan, vice president of Samsung Electronics, jointly announced that China's Samsung and Intelligent Cloud officially formed a strategic partner in the AI ecosystem.
According to Counterpoint Research, 2024 will be a key start for AI smartphones around the world. IDC predicts that by 2024, more than 70% of terminal devices equipped with AI functions will be equipped in the Chinese market, and AI terminals will account for 55%.
Analytic Edge launches Analytic Edge Qube, a SaaS marketing analytics platform
Bull Reuters, January 23: Analytic Edge announced the launch of the SaaS platform Analytic Edge Qube, which can provide enterprises with an all-in-one marketing analysis toolkit. The Analytic Edge Qube platform incorporates a comprehensive suite of solutions, including Demand Drivers(TM), an Integrated Modeling (MMM) solution for continuous marketing, SynTest(TM) for AI-driven testing and learning, PriceSense(TM) for pricing and analytics, and PowerView(TM) for analytics visualization. The platform will provide all marketers with the analytics tools they need to improve marketing efficiency and marketing return on investment (ROI).
Analytic Edge is a global marketing and sales analytics solution** that leverages technology and pre-analytics to help companies make data-driven marketing decisions. The company's flagship platform, Analytic Edge Qube, provides a suite of marketing analytics solutions through a SaaS model. Solutions include Demand Drivers, Syntest, PriceSense, and PowerView.
[two sentences].
Last Sunday, a message that "the United States will block (Chinese users) from using AWS, Azure, etc. to train AI large models" swept through the circle of friends, and this is just a proposal, as for whether it will actually be implemented, we can see again this week.