The tech hub is providing wide-ranging assistance to help young companies achieve their potential
In the China
AI Development Report for 2020 and the AI Open Index, 10 cities were
listed among the world's top 100 cities by artificial intelligence
innovation power.
Hefei, capital
of Anhui province, ranked fourth among all the Chinese cities listed
and third among those on the Chinese mainland.
Since 2013,
the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Anhui
Provincial Government have been developing China Speech Valley, a
high-tech industrial park, into a major hub for the AI industry.
In the
facility, located in the Hefei National High-tech Industry Development
Zone, the human voice is bearing new technological fruit for use in
daily life.
The products
range from robots used for a range of purposes to computer mice with
convenient speech input functions－for Mandarin, English and even some
Chinese dialects－to various wearable smart devices.
In addition,
more than 1,000 companies are working in the facility, aiming to grab a
slice of the country's huge AI development market.
Among them,
publicly-traded iFlytek reported operating revenue of more than 13
billion yuan ($2 billion) last year, with net income of 1.36 billion
yuan, according to its annual report.
So far,
iFlytek's open-access platform has served millions of entrepreneurs and
third-party developers who use its AI and speech-recognition
technologies to conduct business, it said.
It is also a big creator that can spur on smaller outfits.
With the
support of iFlytek's platform, MiMouse, a technology startup in
speech-recognition technologies, settled in China Speech Valley six
years ago. The company has turned creative ideas into commercial
products, such as its smart mouse.
Other companies headquartered in the zone include Huami Corp, a United States-listed maker of smart wearables.
Qi Dongfeng,
CEO of China Speech Valley, said the facility has made great efforts to
help its clients, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, build up
business in the AI field.
Among them, 17 have annual operating revenue of more than 1 billion yuan, according to Qi's management team.
Official assistance
In 2017, the
Anhui government issued a blueprint to build the valley with a 5 billion
yuan investment, aiming to foster a world-class industrial AI cluster
with international competitiveness.
To further
optimize the business environment and better serve high-tech companies,
the city government introduced a range of measures to simplify
administrative procedures.
In the
Government Service Center of the Hefei High-tech Zone, the time needed
to start a company has been reduced to one day or even less, and it only
takes three to four days to obtain a business license, compared with at
least one month previously.
Qi said
entrepreneurs can receive help with many issues such as low-cost office
rentals, recruitment of college graduates, support from AI experts,
expanding market share and obtaining bank loans.
"We should not just chant meaningless slogans, but do real favors for entrepreneurs," he said.
According to
the provincial government's plan, it can provide China Speech Valley
with 800 million yuan a year to improve its industry chain, help
entrepreneurs reduce office rental costs and increase investment in
research and market expansion.
With a
population of 9.37 million, about one-third that of Beijing, Hefei is
being built into a "municipality of innovation", according to the city
government's plan.
Mao Yuanyuan,
vice-president of China Speech Valley, said,"The University of Science
and Technology of China and some institutes with the Chinese Academy of
Sciences based in Hefei have made fruitful achievements thanks to our
creativity."
For example,
Infervision, a company that develops medical-related AI technology in
the hub, has created an auxiliary diagnostic system and equipped dozens
of hospitals nationwide with it to aid the fight against COVID-19.
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