Networking Sessions, Forums, and New Product Launches — Multiple Linear Capital Portfolio Companies Take the Stage at WAIC
Last week, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) took place in Shanghai. Can Zheng, Director at Linear Capital, served as a judge at the "ModelScope Create@AI Hackathon," hosted by AI model community ModelScope, guided by the CCF Open Source Development Committee, co-organized by Alibaba Cloud and NVIDIA, and supported by Alibaba Cloud Tianchi. For details on the three-day competition, [click here](https://mp.
Last week, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) took place in Shanghai. Can Zheng, Managing Director at Linear Capital, attended the "ModelScope Create@AI Hackathon" — hosted by the AI model community ModelScope, guided by the CCF Open Source Development Committee, co-launched by Alibaba Cloud and NVIDIA, and co-organized by Alibaba Cloud Tianchi — where he served as a judge. For details on the three-day competition, click here.
Additionally, several Linear Capital portfolio companies participated in live video sessions, hosted forums, roundtable discussions, and product launches. Here's our roundup:
Horizon Robotics: Founder and CEO Kai Yu in Conversation with Turing Award Winner and Renowned AI Scientist Yann LeCun
At the opening ceremony on the morning of July 6, Horizon Robotics founder and CEO Kai Yu connected live with Yann LeCun, 2018 Turing Award winner and Chief AI Scientist at Meta AI's Fundamental AI Research team. They discussed the path toward artificial general intelligence and innovative approaches to meeting future AI ethics and governance challenges, noting that open source is the only way to make AI platforms safe, beneficial, and practical.
Tezign: Hosted the Forum "AI and Creativity: The Possibilities of Industries Embracing AIGC"
Guided by the Xuhui District People's Government of Shanghai, the forum "AI and Creativity: The Possibilities of Industries Embracing AIGC" — hosted by Tezign and the AIGC Creator Conference — was successfully held on July 8, 2023, at the West Bund in Xuhui, Shanghai. Ling Fan, founder and CEO of Tezign and director of Tongji University's Design AI Lab, delivered an opening speech titled AI and Industrial Imagination. The event invited several industry creators with cutting-edge practice and unique insights in AIGC content technology to discuss topics including AIGC and enterprise innovation, AIGC and tech ecosystems, and AIGC and digital strategy.
Additionally, at this event, Hong Kai, founder and CEO of JINGdigital — a Linear Capital portfolio company — participated as a guest speaker.
Supersim: Co-hosted the "Large Model Production and Industrial Application Cooperation Forum"
On July 7, Supersim founder and CEO Yao Peng attended the "Computing+: Making AI More Universally Empowering" forum hosted by Zhejiang University and co-organized by the Zhejiang University Shanghai Institute for Advanced Study, where he delivered a speech. The following day, the "Large Model Production and Industrial Application Cooperation Forum" — co-hosted by Supersim and Jiafeng CheLu — was held at the World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center. Yao Peng introduced the ATOM AI productivity platform and unveiled Supersim's perception large model, SupreMeta.
Dr. Xia Jiantao, founder and chairman of Quanying Technology, was invited to the roundtable forum "Technology and Humanity: Building an Accessible Intelligent Society." In a discussion on the topic "What opportunities does a people-centered approach provide for exploring new 'deep waters' in the AI industry?," he noted that over the past nearly 300 years, humanity has achieved major breakthroughs in science and technology, triggering three scientific and technological revolutions that have significantly improved overall quality of life. Today, GPT represents a qualitative leap in AI technology, demonstrating powerful intelligent characteristics and sparking a fourth scientific and technological revolution. It is foreseeable that AI will penetrate fields such as energy, medicine, transportation, and scientific research, substantially enhancing human capacity to explore the world and boosting productivity levels, while reshaping social relations.
RoboticPlus: Launches RoBIM Cloud Platform
On July 8, RoboticPlus was invited to attend WAIC 2023 and launched its new AI product — RoBIM Cloud. Developed over three years, RoBIM Cloud is a cloud-native intelligent robot flexible production platform designed to help manufacturing practitioners rapidly build and deploy robot solutions ready for production. Through years of scenario-based practice in construction, shipbuilding, engineering machinery, and energy, RoboticPlus has gradually developed cross-industry "algorithm + data + process" model service capabilities, which have been accumulated and refined into the RoBIM Cloud platform product. With the support of large models and AIGC, RoboticPlus hopes to work with customers and partners across industries through RoBIM Cloud to jointly build a powerful robot AI assistant. RoBIM Cloud is expected to officially launch on the RoboticPlus website in August; the company will invite industry experts for beta testing in advance — stay tuned.
Lingshu Intelligence: First Appearance, Winner of the 2023 Industrial AI Competition Blue Ding Award
As a frontier innovation team in industrial intelligence, Lingshu Intelligence made its first appearance at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference this year, winning the Blue Ding Award in the "Production Operations Intelligence" track of the "AI Leading the Future Factory" Industrial AI Competition — a key event in the industrial track. Lingshu Intelligence also showcased its latest achievements and application cases on-site, and completed a mentor appointment ceremony with Dr. Shi Zhe, Chief Digital Officer of Foxconn Technology Group. The two parties will carry out long-term in-depth exchanges and cooperation.
Zhou Yang, co-founder of Zixuan Technology, was invited as an expert guest to the Intelligent Manufacturing Integration and Innovation Forum. Guests at the conference discussed opportunities, challenges, and strategies for digital transformation in industry and manufacturing. Zhou Yang noted that industrial and manufacturing enterprises often face numerous problems in their digital transformation journey: data silos running in every direction, industrial data that is difficult to integrate, and a disconnect between IT and business operations. To solve these problems and advance intelligent manufacturing, progress in industrial software is core. "We have built a model-based data cloud platform that can abstract various business operations into meta-models composed of entities, attributes, and relationships, bridging heterogeneous data and using business modeling to drive workflows. This enables us to build a suite of model-based applications covering data creation, enterprise collaboration, business management, and digital twins. We hope enterprises can use these foundational technologies to solve problems step by step, avoid detours, and stop reinventing the wheel."
Additionally, Linear Capital portfolio companies including Whale, Hyfree, Fengchang Technology, and Heywhale all appeared at the AI conference as exhibitors or guest participants.
About Linear Capital
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Linear Capital is an early-stage investment firm focused on "frontier technology + industry," targeting frontier technologies such as data intelligence, digital new infrastructure, next-generation robotics, and new technology transformations in traditional sectors (such as biomedicine, materials, and energy), applied across vertical industries to substantially improve industrial efficiency, empower the resolution of pain points, and enable industrial upgrading. Through significant increases in industrial value, we achieve excess returns in commercial value. We currently manage ten funds with total assets under management of approximately $2 billion.
Our investment stage focuses primarily on leading angel to Series A rounds, with typical investment amounts of $3 million to $8 million or equivalent RMB per project.
To date, we have made early-stage investments in over 120 startup teams including Horizon Robotics, Kujiale, Sensors Data, Tezign, Rokid, Guandata, and Agile Robots. The combined valuation of Linear Capital's portfolio companies is approximately $20 billion.
In the near term, Linear Capital is working to become the premier "Data Intelligence Technology Fund," and over the long term, gradually build itself into the most influential "Frontier Technology Application Fund."