Investor warns of day of reckoning for 90 per cent of Chinese AI start-ups as funding dries up – SCMP
What happened: Due to China’s de-leveraging campaign, economic slowdown, and mounting pressure to commercialize the technology, 90 percent of China’s artificial intelligence startups are expected to fail over the next two years, according to Ai Yu, head of China Everbright’s new economy funds. Everbright invested in startups including Meituan-Dianping, iQiyi, SenseTime, NIO and Xpeng.
Why it’s important: According to a report by Tsinghua University in July, 60 percent of globally raised funds for AI projects all went to those in China from 2013 to the first quarter of this year. According to Ai, during the boom, start-ups have raised funds with algorithms, computing power or engineering, but they did not have clear plans for commercialization.