Chapter 238 Impact and Follow-up

“Baidu is finished.”

This time when 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 and worked on search engine-related businesses. He also jumped from Yahoo to Microsoft, where he was also responsible for Bing.

After joining the company, Lu Qi has been responsible for building the entire artificial intelligence team. As the vice president in charge of artificial intelligence business, he naturally pays close attention to the developments in the field of artificial intelligence.

Therefore, this time when investing in Alpha Technology, Lu Qi can't escape.

After learning about the final shortlist of Alpha Technologies, Lu Qi made a direct conclusion.

“Perhaps Bing can still gain a foothold in the analytical search engine field by combining with GPT, but Baidu’s main business will have no chance of recovery.

Wenxin Yiyan’s generative dialogue may not be worse than that of other domestic artificial intelligence companies, but Baidu’s operation team and overall execution capabilities are not enough to support them to win this battle.

Not to mention, generative AI itself will be a very niche market, and different types of generative AI will be differentiated.” Lu Qi was very emotional.

He was previously the CEO of Baidu and claimed that he would make a major change in Baidu, but in the end he was replaced.

Although it was an amicable breakup on the surface, everyone knew that the two parties parted ways because Baidu was in a state of disarray and could not adapt to the changes brought about by Lu Qi.

Lu Qi has no feelings for his colleagues who worked with him at Baidu, but he still has feelings for Baidu.

In other words, he has a strong desire to take down Google. He has tried almost everything from Yahoo to Bing to Baidu.

All failed.

I didn't expect that in the last years of my career, I would still see a technology company like Hornbill that relies on its technology and product advantages to challenge Google.

"Baidu won't fall so soon, right?" After listening to Lu Qi's words, Li Haide showed a trace of confusion on his face, "Baidu failed to make the list, so Hornbill's entry into the Chinese market won't be smooth.

For a giant like Baidu, Yanjing should want to protect it to some extent, and they won’t let Hornbill in so easily, right? "

Li Haide comes from the photovoltaic industry. He believes that the relationship between the government and enterprises is more of protection and support, because in the early days of photovoltaics, the government's subsidies to photovoltaic manufacturers were unprecedented.

Lu Qi’s thinking is more internet-oriented. He knows very well that Baidu is not that important:

"If it were just us, Baidu might be able to survive for a while, after all, we have no intention of getting involved in search engines.

But you have to know that Tencent is also on the list. Tencent has never given up on the search engine business. After acquiring Sogou, Tencent has been sparing no effort to support Sogou.

The purpose of integrating Sogou into Goose-related applications such as WeChat, Zhihu, and Pinduoduo is to increase Sogou's market share.

Previously, in the mobile content ecosystem, Tencent was surpassed by ByteDance, and its text-heavy content began to lose out to the short videos of Tik Tok and the combination of pictures and texts of Xiaohongshu.

Tencent has a strong desire to grab the attention of users, especially young people. After successfully becoming a shareholder of Alpha Technology, they will definitely find ways to cooperate with Alpha and introduce Hornbill into Tencent's ecosystem.

With Tencent doing the PR behind the scenes, Baidu can’t resist on its own.”

Lu Qi was very pessimistic. Not only was he pessimistic, the capital market also voted with its feet. After the results came out, Tencent's share price 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 doomed, and it is even more impossible to revive by relying on the search engine field.

The entire artificial intelligence field has continued to develop by leaps and bounds this year. A large number of new applications centered around artificial intelligence have been born, and many artificial intelligence companies have declined while many have risen.

The field of artificial intelligence is becoming more and more like the rise of the Internet in the 1990s, with rapid updates and changes.

In order to maintain its leading position in the field of science and technology, or at least to create the illusion of it, America has been promoting its achievements in the field of artificial intelligence.

In the eyes of discerning people, the truly explosive news in the field of artificial intelligence this year is the emergence of Hornbill.

Although Hornbill reflects more breakthroughs in search engine optimization and encryption algorithm cracking, the degree of artificial intelligence is not enough.

However, the industry believes that with the support of Samad, a big name in the algorithm field, Hornbill, as a To C application, will improve its intelligence very quickly after the data scale accumulates.

Lu Qi agrees with this view. He is a more academic-oriented manager and has always been following the latest academic trends. When he was working at Baidu, he personally attended almost every artificial intelligence conference every year to listen to 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 yet officially entered the Chinese market, but the market has already sentenced their search engine business to a suspended death sentence.

The Hong Kong stock market can fall 17 points in one day. It would be a bit optimistic to describe it as a suspended death sentence.

For Baidu, another area of ​​focus is autonomous driving, but the market also does not believe that they can achieve any results.

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 create a generation gap? No.

Like Huawei, they are standing on the shore and not building cars themselves. Baidu's entire organization's action, manufacturing experience, supply chain management capabilities, etc. are not as good as Huawei's.

The combination of various factors has made the entire capital market unprecedentedly pessimistic about Baidu.

I think if Baidu is any better it could be the next Yahoo, and if it is worse it could be the next Shanda.

"According to the Wall Street Journal, Malaysian artificial intelligence company Alpha Technology has completed its first round of financing with a valuation of up to US$500 billion. New investors include Blackstone, Temasek, Tencent and other leading domestic and foreign companies.

In addition to the above-mentioned financial institutions and Internet companies, there is another investor in this round of investors that has attracted outside attention, that is, Light Armor Aerospace (LA) from China.

The financing decision made by Mr. Samad, the founder of Alpha Technologies, was speculated by the outside world that Alpha Technologies will cooperate with Guangjia Aerospace in the field of artificial intelligence.

This speculation has not been confirmed yet, but the market has responded enthusiastically. After the A-share market opened, the concept stocks of Light Mech Aerospace saw a general rise, and the companies related to robots saw an astonishing rise, because the outside world believed that the cooperation between Light Mech Aerospace and Alpha Technology on artificial intelligence would be related to robot intelligence. After this round of financing is completed, it also means that the company will have the support of the giants of the world's mainstream economies, and the lineup is very 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 keep their original market share."

There has been a strong response in China, because Hornbill's user experience is so good that it has gradually begun to break through the circle. 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, is this finally their retribution? Tencent should quickly introduce Hornbill to China, and we will immediately support you as the new search engine oligopoly!"

"Baidu, go to hell. I have always disliked Baidu. Tieba is such an interesting community, but you guys have run it half-dead. You are a group of talented people. I don't think you can end it sooner.

You relied on search engines to survive in the era of mobile Internet, and you still want to rely on search engines to survive in the era of artificial intelligence? Fortunately, Hornbill will make it impossible for you to survive. "

"I am now curious about how Alpha Technology can cooperate with Light Armor Aerospace. If there is a 100,000-level household robot, I will definitely support it.

Guangshen said that he and Musk would build a car together. It would take at least three years to build a car. Three years is too long to wait. It would be more realistic to first build a commercial robot to open everyone’s eyes.”

"If you ask me, the God of Light should send the space station to space as soon as possible. The war of words between Bezos and Musk on Twitter has escalated to the point where Bezos said Blue Origin would soon provide space station tourism services, and Musk debunked his claim that the space station was purchased.

Light God should just start space tourism. I don’t want to let Blue Origin make money again. It’s better for Light Armor Aerospace to operate directly.”

On the simplified Chinese Internet, once the topic involves Chen Yuanguang, there is a high probability that the conversation will deviate from the topic to Chen Yuanguang.

There’s no way around it, this is the charm of the top stars.

"Geely and Alpha Technology had a very good chat. We had a very pleasant discussion about Hornbill's future business operation cooperation model in China. Tencent will use its rich past experience to help Hornbill complete the transformation for the Chinese market as soon as possible and help Hornbill enter the Chinese market as soon as possible."

"I think Hornbill's entry into the Chinese market will have an impact on the entire search engine market. Hornbill is a disruptive innovation for the search engine business. The mainstream search engines on the market, such as Google, Bing, and Sogou, cannot compete with Hornbill's product capabilities and product models."

"Yes, we are currently in intensive negotiations with Alpha Technologies. 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.

As for Sogou, we are considering packaging all of its personnel and incorporating them into the new company.”

"This is the reality. Under the dimensionality reduction attack of new technologies, Sogou has no room to survive. It is meaningless to keep it running normally. This is a waste of resources. The search engine model has a history of nearly 40 years since Yahoo, and it is time for a change.

I think Hornbill came at the right time. Search engines are barely able to survive the impact of mobile applications. With Hornbill, mobile applications will not only not impact them, but will become their nourishment. "

"The entire search engine industry should reflect on why such disruptive innovation could be made by a startup. We are not suggesting that Baidu, but I am referring to Tencent and Sogou business colleagues who need to reflect on this."

When the person in charge of Tencent was interviewed by Caixin, he didn't mention Baidu at all in his words, but after reading it, you will feel that every sentence is mocking Baidu.

For Baidu, lies do not hurt people, but the truth is a sharp knife. Baidu is indeed facing the risk of being replaced by Hornbill, and Baidu is well aware of this.

Faced with an almost completely unfavorable environment including public opinion, secondary market, competitors, etc., Robin, who had not appeared in public 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 change the reality that the capital market is voting with its feet and Baidu's stock price is falling rapidly.

After this round of competition, Baidu is the biggest loser, while Tencent and Guangjia Aerospace are among the winners. Tencent's response is to cooperate with Alpha Technology to bring Baidu down. The outside world is more curious about what benefits Guangjia Aerospace has gained.

"Mr. Lin, this time when we went to Malaysia, after becoming the financing target, we were allocated 2.5% of the shares. According to the valuation of 500 billion US dollars, we need to pay 5 million US dollars to Alpha Technology." After Lu Qi returned to Shenhai, he immediately reported his gains to Lin Jia.

"Okay, let's get ready to go through the process. Let the company's legal affairs department and lawyers review the contract carefully. 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 just transferring money from one hand to the other.

Of course, even if it wasn't a one-way street, she would not hesitate when faced with such a high-quality project.

"In addition, after we became the financing target, Mr. Samad had a round of dialogue with each financing target one by one," said Lu Qi.

Lin Jia asked curiously: "Meet in person or call?"

Lu Qi: "Phone call, Mr. Samad seems to be particularly concerned about personal privacy."

"Oh, go on."

“I don’t know what Mr. Samad talked about with others, but when he talked to me, he talked very deeply about the application of artificial intelligence in the field of robotics and gave me some good ideas.

I said at the time that we could work with AlphaTech to do some joint R&D projects in the field of artificial intelligence," said Lu Qi.

Lin Jia nodded: "No problem, you have the authority for matters related to artificial intelligence research and development."

Lu Qi said: “Well, after hearing about this, Samad suggested that we could jointly create a humanoid intelligent robot.”

Lin Jia suddenly became interested: "Humanoid robot? I think it's possible, but what's the point?

Did Samad tell you about building such a humanoid robot and what its application scenarios are?

Family nanny? Military conflict? Manufacturing?

Lu Qi smiled bitterly: "Boss Lin, what you said is too difficult.

Currently in the field of AI+robotics, even multimodal imitation learning has not been completed. If we work together, our initial goal will be to create a robot that can perform actions like a human.

It needs to have common sense of human physics and the ability to move and operate in a general environment. Only after these two basic problems are solved can we talk about its use.

Moreover, for the light armor system, humanoid robots in space and on Earth are definitely two different things.

This will lead to a paradox, that is, if it is trained with common sense of physics on Earth, these attempts will in turn become obstacles when it goes to space.

Mr. Samad said he could solve this problem, allowing robots to truly have the ability to learn quickly, and there would be a general paradigm to solve this problem. "

(End of this chapter)