Krypton Evening News | Meituan will launch an anti-fatigue mechanism nationwide; BYD initiates a 3-billion-yuan education charity fund; Alipay launches a new generation of AI visual search product "Take a Look".
Big Companies:
Ant Group Releases 2024 Technology and Ecology White Paper, with Nearly 35,000 Patents Behind Alipay
36Kr learned that Ant Group has released the 2024 Technology and Ecology White Paper on its official technical WeChat account. The data in the white paper is updated until the end of November 2024, covering five dimensions: patents, open source, standards, papers, and industry-university-research cooperation. In terms of patents, as of the end of November 2024, Ant Group has a total of 34,576 global patent applications, with invention patents accounting for 97%, and the proportion of foreign patent applications accounting for 35%. Among the applied patents, more than 10% of Ant Group's important patents have been globally deployed, including in the United States, Europe, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, and other countries and regions.
Meituan to Launch Anti-Fatigue Mechanism Nationwide
36Kr learned from Meituan that the rider anti-fatigue mechanism has been launched and put into operation in major cities across the country. According to the notice received by Meituan riders, a reminder will be sent after riding for more than 8 hours, and then a reminder will be sent every hour thereafter; riders will be forced to log out after riding for 12 hours. According to the previously disclosed "anti-fatigue pilot" data and research results of Meituan riders, 99.82% of the riders who are normally riding in the pilot area are not affected, and only 0.18% of the riders who continuously ride and trigger the rest clause. This measure effectively guarantees the riders' right to rest and prevents a very small number of extreme cases. Meituan also actively invites experts and riders to participate in discussions to balance the demands of all parties.
BYD Initiates 3 Billion Education Charity Fund
36Kr learned that on December 30, BYD announced the initiation of a 3 billion education charity fund. The first batch of funds is used to set up scholarships in 35 universities across the country, rewarding excellence and cultivating outstanding talents. It also cooperates with 28 science and technology museums and museums to donate new energy vehicle technology popular science exhibition tools to boost automotive popular science education.
Huawei and JiaHuan Technology Hold Core Partner Signing Ceremony
36Kr learned that according to the official WeChat account of JiaHuan Technology, on December 26, Huawei and JiaHuan Technology held a signing ceremony for the core partner of the Government Affairs One Network Through Army. This signing represents that Huawei and industry partners continue to carry out more in-depth capacity cooperation in the field of government affairs and urban digital intelligence. The two sides will build an end-to-end capacity system including consultation planning, solutions, integration, services, and operations around multiple scenarios of government affairs and urban digital intelligence transformation.
Shanghai Guotou and Pudong New Area Release Shanghai Embodied Intelligence Fund
On December 30, the Shanghai Embodied Intelligence Fund was officially released. The fund was jointly initiated and established by Shanghai Guotou Company and Pudong New Area. The Shanghai State-owned Capital Parent Fund, Zhangjiang Group, and Pudong Venture Capital are the cornerstone investors of the fund. The initial scale is 1 billion yuan, and it conducts investments in the upstream and downstream of the embodied intelligence industry chain, mainly including the fields of embodied intelligence ontology, core components, and pan-robots. (Jiemian)
JD Technology Announces the Implementation of the 20-Salary Plan
36Kr learned that JD Technology announced the implementation of the 20-salary plan: In 2025, the average salary of all employees will reach 20 salaries. This is also another large-scale salary increase plan implemented by JD Group at the end of 2024 after announcing the 2024 year-end bonus distribution plan and the salary increase notice for more than 20,000 JD customer service representatives. JD Technology is a business subsidiary of JD Group that focuses on serving customers with technology, providing financial technology products and technical services to cities, enterprises, financial institutions, and individual users.
Investment and Financing:
"Zhuguang Technology" Obtains Nearly 100 Million Yuan in Series A Financing
36Kr learned that recently, "Zhuguang Technology" has obtained nearly 100 million yuan in Series A financing. The investors in this round are the State Power Investment Corporation Industrial Fund, Yida Capital, Suikai Investment, Guangzhou Development District Fund Group, and Beihang Investment. The financing funds are mainly used for the construction of a 650*550 m㎡ organic photovoltaic module mass production line that will be started this year.
"Lanze Energy" Completes Several Hundred Million Yuan in Series A Financing
36Kr learned that the domestic green and sustainable fuel enterprise "Lanze Energy" announced the completion of several hundred million yuan in Series A financing. This round of financing is jointly led by the National Green Development Fund and Shanghai Lianhe Investment, with many new shareholders such as Zhongke Chuangxing, Guokong Chuangtou, Pianxuan Fund, and Beijing Juxin participating in the investment. This round of financing is mainly used for the construction of Lanze Energy's green methanol and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) projects.
"Tuoyuan Wisdom" Completes Nearly 100 Million Yuan in Pre-A Round Financing
36Kr learned that "Tuoyuan Wisdom (X-Era AI)" recently announced the completion of the Pre-A round financing, with a financing amount of nearly 100 million yuan. This round of financing is jointly invested by Guangdong Technology Financial Group, Pengcheng Vision Fund, Redbird Startup Fund and other investment institutions. The funds will be mainly used to accelerate the research and development and application of related technologies such as multimodal large models and embodied intelligence.
New Products:
Alipay Launches a New Generation of AI Visual Search Product "Explore Once"
36Kr learned that based on its self-developed multimodal large model technology, Alipay has launched a new generation of AI visual search product "Explore Once". When users encounter something of interest, they can let the AI use the camera to identify flowers, plants, pets, trendy toys, serve as a portable guide for travel, query product and drug details, and also interestingly interpret cute pet photos and baby photos. Currently, this product has been launched on Alipay, and can also be quickly accessed in the Zhixiaobao App.
Black Sesame Intelligence Releases Huashan A2000 Family Chip Platform
36Kr learned that Black Sesame Intelligence announced the launch of its high-computing power chip platform - Huashan A2000 Family, which is specially designed for the next-generation AI model. According to the introduction, the Huashan A2000 Family includes three products: A2000 Lite, A2000, and A2000 Pro, which are respectively targeted at different levels of autonomous driving needs. A2000 Lite focuses on urban intelligent driving, A2000 supports full-scene general intelligent driving, and A2000 Pro is designed for high-level full-scene general intelligent driving.
Jijia Technology Builds a New Generation of 4D World Model
36Kr learned that Jijia Technology has built a new generation of 4D world model products based on spatial intelligence technology. According to the official introduction, the 4D world model can controllably generate high-quality and interactive 4D scenes from low-quality data such as pictures and monocular videos based on constraint conditions such as text prompts, pictures, and structured information. It can be used for the training and evaluation of various algorithms such as reinforcement learning and imitation learning.
Lingchu Intelligence Releases the First End-to-End Embodied Model Psi R0
36Kr learned that Lingchu Intelligence has released the first end-to-end embodied model Psi R0 based on reinforcement learning (RL). This model supports the coordinated complex operations of two dexterous hands, concatenates and mixes multiple skills for training, generates an intelligent agent with reasoning ability, thereby completing and closing the loop of long-range dexterous operation tasks. Moreover, Psi R0 can also achieve generalization across items and scenarios.
Zhujidi Dynamics Releases Full-Size Humanoid Technology Demo
36Kr learned that on December 30, Zhujidi Dynamics released the latest test of the full-size humanoid robot. It is understood that it demonstrates the engineering upgrade of the whole machine, realizes the coordinated large-scale movement of multiple joints of the whole body, and completes a series of stable and highly dynamic complex whole-body actions.
Today's Views:
36Kr learned that on December 30, Hu Baishan, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Vivo, said that the return of Huawei is the biggest variable in the domestic mobile phone market in 2024. Many users have chosen Huawei again, and the pattern of the top mobile phone manufacturers in the market has changed from 5 to 6. Every mobile phone manufacturer is going all out, and the domestic competition in the next 2-3 years will be in a more intense state.
Other News Worth Noting:
Learned from the Beijing Housing Provident Fund Management Center, starting from January 1, 2025, the interest rate of the Beijing stock provident fund loan will be lowered. The stock housing loan refers to the individual housing provident fund loan issued before May 18, 2024. Starting from January 1, 2025, the corresponding first and second set of interest rates will be adjusted. (Beijing Daily)
36Kr learned that the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments have issued guidance on promoting the high-quality development of the data industry. It is mentioned that conditional industry leading enterprises and Internet platform enterprises are encouraged to establish independent business entities for data business, support data enterprises to become stronger, better and larger, and promote intensive and large-scale development. Vigorously cultivate innovative small and medium-sized data enterprises, support them to develop towards specialization and refinement, and guide leading enterprises to provide data, algorithms, computing power and other resource usage conveniences for small and medium-sized enterprises. Strengthen industry-university-research collaboration, build a data industry innovation consortium, and construct an ecological system for the integrated development of large, medium and small enterprises and the collaborative innovation of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
Wei Lizhong, Deputy Director of the Resource Development Department of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, introduced at the regular press conference in the fourth quarter on December 30 that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism will actively play a coordinating and coordinating role, encourage and guide all regions and platforms to set up special pages, release preferential measures, attract tourists to experience ice and snow, and continuously stimulate consumption vitality. It is understood that Yanqing District, Beijing will issue 2 million yuan of ice and snow cultural tourism consumption coupons on the Ctrip Travel and Qunar Travel platforms. Jilin cooperates with China UnionPay and plans to issue 30 million yuan of ice and snow consumption coupons. (Shanghai Securities News)