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More than 300,000 MPVs have been sold, and the monthly sales can still break through 10,000. Recently, there seems to be no one else except Lantu Dreamer.

On February 19th, Lantu Automobile held a launch conference of smart new products in Wuhan. In the existing Lantu Dreamer product matrix, two new models, namely, the four-wheel drive excellent Gankun version and the four-wheel drive distinguished Gankun version, were added.

Both cars are equipped with Huawei Gankun Intelligent Driving ADS 3.0 and Huawei HarmonyOS Cockpit, and adopt the Tianyuan architecture developed by Lantu and the original intelligent electric architecture of ESSA, which are completely upgraded in intelligence and intelligent driving.

In terms of selling price, the brand-new Lantu Dreamer four-wheel drive excellent Gankun version PHEV version is 359,900 yuan, EV version is 379,900 yuan; Four-wheel drive distinguished Gankun version PHEV version is 389,900 yuan, EV version is 409,900 yuan.

• Double-car launch, configuration upgrade

The two new models launched this time are both Gankun versions, all of which are equipped with Huawei Gankun Zhijia without exception. Among them, Zhuoyue Gankun Edition has added the practical function of AIQD on the basis of the original Zhuoyue Edition. Not only that, it is also equipped with Huawei Gankun Intelligent Driving ADS 3.0 and HarmonyOS cockpit, all of which are high-level intelligent configurations that everyone is thinking about.

Looking at the distinguished Gankun version, the car was originally equipped with a refrigerator and color TV, but now it has added comfort equipment such as silent tires, hairy nose roof and negative ion atmosphere system, and also equipped with Huawei Gankun Intelligent Driving ADS 3.0 and HarmonyOS cockpit.

It is not difficult to see that these two new models are upgraded in configuration, and Huawei Gankun Intelligent Driving A DS 3.0 and HarmonyOS cockpit are still retained, which brings us one step closer to intelligent driving. After all, it is the focus of everyone’s choice. It can be said that consumers have been properly grasped.

Objectively speaking, the configuration of the entry-level version of Lantu Dreamer is already quite excellent. If you put it on Saina and Grevia, this configuration is properly super-top-level. The length of the car is over 5.3 meters, and the acceleration of 100 kilometers takes only 5.9 seconds. This data is also quite amazing.

The price is more than 300,000, and the monthly sales in December actually exceeded 10,000, which is really beyond my expectation.

It is worth mentioning that the current version is the same as when it was released in August last year, so the new dreamer mainly adds new models and provides consumers with more choices.

• Amazing smart driving is at your fingertips, and the experience is upgraded.

Many people may not know what kind of sparks Huawei will collide with when it combines ADS 3.0 with Lantu Dreamer. Imagine that when you go to work in the morning, starting from home, the vehicle can automatically plan the route and deliver you directly to the parking space of the company. This is the real high-level intelligent driving experience.

There is also the parking service function. When you arrive at the shopping mall, you just need to hand over the task of finding a parking space to the vehicle, and it can do it by itself. When you walk out of the mall after shopping, the car will automatically drive out of the parking space to meet you.

These functions, which are both practical and full of sci-fi, have been realized in the version of Lan Tu Dreamer Gan Kun, and it feels like watching a sci-fi film, which is surprisingly convenient.

• Electric EV:

The cooperation between Lantu and Huawei is of great significance. It allows consumers to buy an MPV equipped with Gankun Zhijia in the price range of 350,000, which is undoubtedly a key step in the process of popularizing Zhijia in 2025.

Nowadays, buying a dreamer equipped with Huawei Gankun Zhijia is no longer limited to the top version, and all versions have the opportunity to own it. The high-end technology has sunk from "flagship exclusive" to "accessible to the public", giving high-end MPV consumers more car choices and truly realizing the equal rights of intelligent driving.

Hangzhou issued implementation opinions on accelerating the innovation and development of artificial intelligence industry. In 2025, the industrial ecology of "high computing power+strong algorithm+big data" will be basically formed, and a virtuous circle will be realized in which big computing power incubates big models, big models drive big industries and big industries promote big development, and Hangzhou will be built into a national computing power cost depression, model output source and data sharing highland. Following last year’s announcement that AI was successfully used to control the nuclear fusion plasma inside the tokamak for the first time, DeepMind achieved a controlled nuclear fusion breakthrough with AI, and the accuracy of plasma shape simulation increased by 65%.

01. Financing

CGI, a Canadian information technology service company, plans to invest about 750 million US dollars to expand the AI field within three years.

According to a report by MarketWatch on July 24th, CGI, a Canadian information technology service company, plans to invest 1 billion Canadian dollars (about 756.3 million US dollars) in three years to cooperate with customers to expand artificial intelligence services and solutions.

Web3 and AI startup ZYBER 365 completed $100 million Series A financing.

According to Financial Express, Web3 and AI startup ZYBER 365 announced the completion of a series of financing of 100 million US dollars, with the company’s valuation reaching 1.2 billion US dollars, and the British SRAM & MRAM Group participated in the investment.

AI security company Protect AI completed $35 million in financing, led by Evolution Equity Partners.

According to TechCrunch’s report on July 26th, AI security company Protect AI announced that it has completed the $35 million Series A financing, with Evolution Equity Partners leading the investment, and Salesforce Ventures, Acrew Capital, boldstart ventures, Knollwood Capital and Pelion Ventures participating. The scale of this round of financing is more than twice that of the Protect AI seed round that ended in December last year, bringing the total financing of the startup company to 48.5 million US dollars.

AI startup Graft received $10 million in financing, led by Radical Ventures.

According to TechCrunch, on July 26th, the AI startup Graft announced that it had received a seed investment of US$ 10 million, with Radical Ventures leading the investment and GV participating. Last year, the company raised a total of $4.5 million before the seed round of financing, and the total financing amount has reached $14.5 million. At the same time, Graft announced that when it starts to open the artificial intelligence development platform to more companies in a controllable way, it will invite companies to apply for access to the platform.

AI protein design company "Liwen Institute" completed tens of millions of angel round financing.

According to the investment community, recently, AI protein design company Hangzhou Liwen Institute Biotechnology Co., Ltd. announced the completion of tens of millions of angel round financing. This round of financing was led by Cailletet Capital, followed by Panlin Capital and Hongshi Capital, and the seed round led the investor Zhenge Fund to make additional investment. The financing funds will be mainly used for the optimization and development of the AI protein design platform, and to promote the incubation and construction of multiple product pipelines.

"Lingao Technology" completed a multi-million-dollar seed round of financing and devoted itself to building large-scale model middleware.

According to 36Kr’s report on July 31st, Lingao Technology, a startup company dedicated to building data pipelines and large-scale middleware, recently officially announced the completion of seed round financing. According to reports, the amount of this round of financing is in the order of millions of dollars, and the investors are Jingya Capital and Plug and Play. At present, the company mainly provides two products-data pipeline (Vanus Connect) and large model middleware (Vanus AI). Among them, Vanus AI, the middleware of AI big model, can help enterprises to link big models and build knowledge base, debug prompt engineering at the same time, and finally build their own AI applications.

The AI-driven enterprise learning platform "Little Knowledge" has completed tens of millions of Pre-A rounds of financing.

According to the report of science and technology innovation board Daily on July 28th, a little knowledge (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as a little knowledge) has completed tens of millions of yuan of Pre-A financing, which was led by Zhencheng Investment, followed by former UFIDA CFO Xu Zhoujin, and joined the company as a co-founder. This round of financing is mainly used for brand building, market expansion and promoting product research and development based on AI large language model.

AutogenAI, an AI generation tool used to write tenders, received an investment of 22.3 million US dollars.

According to TechCrunch’s report on July 27th, London AI startup AutogenAI received an investment of $22.3 million from Blossom Capital. The new funds will be used to hire more talents, expand the platform and expand the customer base. People familiar with the matter said that the investment valued AutogenAI at about "hundreds of millions of dollars". The company had previously raised about $3.5 million.

02. Start a business

Sogou’s former CMO Hong Tao joined the big model company founded by Wang Xiaochuan.

According to the science and technology innovation board Journal reported on July 27th, Hong Tao, former CMO of sogou, announced in a circle of friends that he would join Baichuan Intelligent, an AI big model company jointly founded by Wang Xiaochuan, former CEO of sogou, and Ru Liyun, former COO of sogou, to take charge of commercialization. On July 11th, Baichuan Intelligent officially released two quantized versions of the general large language model Baichuan-13 B-Base, dialogue model Baichuan-13 B-Chat and its INT4/INT8 with a parameter of 13 billion.

Wang Xiaochuan AI Company added several shareholders and increased its capital to 6.47 million.

According to Tianyancha App, recently, Beijing Baichuan Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. has undergone industrial and commercial changes, adding Baichuan Zhongzhi (Beijing) Management Consulting Partnership (Limited Partnership) and a number of natural persons as shareholders, and the registered capital of the company has increased from 5 million RMB to about 6,476,700 RMB.

03, big model

Know Smart Technology Releases 140 Billion Parameter Know Smart KDF Model

According to the report of IT House on July 25th, Beijing Zhiwei Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. recently released a large model of intelligent KDF in Shanghai, and a series of products developed based on this model, including financial industry tools such as "KDF Zhixun", "KDF Never" and "KDF Zhongshu".

It is reported that the training data of the KDF model is mainly in Chinese, and it contains a lot of financial data to improve the problem-solving ability of the model in the commercial and financial fields. In addition, some English and code data are combined in the training data to adapt to the general ability of the model. In the training process, the intelligent KDF model treats a single Chinese character as an independent Token. The model parameters amount to 140 billion, and the number of training Token reaches 400 billion.

TransGPT?, an open source transportation model of Beijing Jiaotong University, is far-reaching.

On July 19th, Beijing Jiaotong University, together with china computer federation Smart Transportation Branch and Zuzhi Multimode Company, officially released and opened the first comprehensive transportation model in China-TRANSGPT Zhiyuan, which was independently developed by the research team of the Key Laboratory of Transportation Big Data and Artificial Intelligence of the Ministry of Education of Beijing Jiaotong University.

"Zhiyuan" takes the meaning of "going far and being far-reaching", and adopts the large text model, multi-modal model and real-time scene data calling mode based on Transformer architecture, forming an overall framework based on comprehensive traffic model and supplemented by traffic segmentation industry applications. Some of its main functions and features include: intelligent traffic planning, intelligent traffic management, intelligent travel assistant, traffic policy research and traffic safety education. At present, some data, codes and models of Zhiyuan Big Model have been opened in GitHub.

Yongyou released YonGPT, a big model of enterprise service.

According to a report by Cailian on July 27th, UFIDA released YonGPT, a large enterprise service model. According to the official introduction, YonGPT is an important component of UFIDA BIP, which can adapt to the mainstream general language model in the industry, and realize enterprise intelligence in four aspects: business operation, human-computer interaction, knowledge generation and application generation by providing general capability services, domain services and industry services.

Netease has officially released the "Zi Yue" big model.

According to the report of science and technology innovation board Daily on July 26th, Netease Youdao officially released the "Zi Yue" big model this evening. According to Zhou Feng, CEO of Netease Youdao, the "Zi Yue" big model has been applied to the software and hardware in Youdao Ecology, and it has been commercialized, including big model translation, AI composition correction, English grammar intensive speaking, virtual human oral coach, AIBox, document question and answer and so on.

Xinyi Technology released the first vertical video model in China.

According to 36Kr’s report on July 27th, Xinyi Technology held the "New Vision Xinyi Video Model Release Conference" in Beijing. At the meeting, Xinyi Technology released the first large-scale model focusing on video in China, and the AIGC video generation platform "Sechuang Video Creation Platform", the first commercial digital platform "Xinyi Digital People Platform". In addition, it also released the first domestic star digital person blessing video production product "Secondwish".

Google’s team of experts released the medical model Med-PaLM M, which can encode and interpret biomedical data.

According to the report of Webmaster’s House on July 31st, a team of experts composed of several research institutes under Google recently published a paper and released a multi-modal model named Med-PaLM M.

Med-PaLM M is a large-scale multi-modal generation model, which can flexibly encode and interpret biomedical data. Compared with the existing model, Med-PaLM M is competitive in many tasks, and even performs better in some tasks. The researchers also demonstrated the transfer learning and zero sample reasoning ability of Med-Palm M. However, in practical application, further work is needed. This research has a positive prospect for future medical solutions based on artificial intelligence.

MosaicML, an AI company, has launched a 7 billion parameter model MPT-7 B-8 K, which is said to be "commercially available for processing 8,000 words of text at a time".

According to the news of IT House on July 25th, AI startup MosaicML recently released its 7 billion parameter model MPT-7 B-8 K. It is reported that the model can handle 8000 words of text at a time, and it is quite good at dealing with key abstracts and questions and answers of long articles, and can further fine-tune relevant configurations according to specific tasks on the MosaicML platform.

It is reported that the series model uses 1.5 million Token, and it takes 3 days to complete the model training with 256 H100 GPU. MosaicML released three versions of the model this time, including MPT-7 B-8 k, MPT-7 B-8 k-Instruct and MPT-7 B-8 k-Chat.

Foreign media: OpenAI is developing a new open source model G3 PO to fight against Microsoft Llama 2.

According to IT House, citing The Information, a foreign technology media, OpenAI is currently developing a new open source model codenamed "G3 PO" in order to counter the open source model Llama 2 jointly developed by Microsoft and Meta, and it is not clear when it will be released.

Reddit community users believe that OpenAI has delayed the release of the open source model for two reasons: the OpenAI team is relatively small, focusing on promoting the application mall and providing customers with a market for selling customized AI models. This helps OpenAI to build a moat; OpenAI also wants to create a personalized ChatGPT assistant. According to sources, launching a real "derivative version" directly competes with Microsoft, and this effort "may take several years."

Shanghai "Fengwu" big model accurately predicts "Du Surui", and its accuracy is better than that of Europe and America.

According to the news of China Meteorological Bureau, the No.5 typhoon Du Surui made landfall on the coast of Jinjiang, Fujian at 9: 55 on July 28th, and the maximum wind force near the center was 15. Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (Shanghai AI Laboratory) predicted the typhoon path based on the original research and development of the Fengwu meteorological model (hereinafter referred to as "Fengwu"), and achieved accurate prediction. Based on the comparison between the forecast path and the actual path of typhoon from July 21 to July 27, the 24-hour advance error of Fengwu is 38.7 kilometers, which is better than the 54.11 kilometers of ECMWF, the international authority of meteorological forecasting, and the 54.98 kilometers of NCEP. The numerical comparison of forecast 120 hours in advance shows that the error value of wind and black is 121.4 km, which is obviously better than that of ECMWF (293.8 km) and NCEP (826.5 km).

04. Application

Xiaohongshu online "at the moment" pure text note-taking function, using AI technology to generate pictures.

According to 36Kr’s report on July 25th, Little Red Book recently launched the "Now" function. With the "Now" function, the user can directly input text, and the algorithm will generate a picture for the user based on the input text content and complete the publishing. In addition, users can also doodle on the drawing board and use AI to beautify the doodle before publishing it. The landing of this function benefits from AIGC technology. At present, this function has been fully launched in the latest version.

BMW is using AI technology to reduce the production cost of automobile factories, saving $1 million a year.

According to CNBC reported by IT House, BMW recently deployed artificial intelligence technology in its factory in Fort Sparthan, which is said to save $1 million (about 7.15 million RMB) every year. BMW did not disclose the name of the artificial intelligence tool, but simply stated that the tool is "mainly aimed at the company’s production workshop" and can play the role of "optimizing the manufacturing process, improving efficiency, reducing waste and predicting equipment failures".

Runway, the behind-the-scenes special effects company of "Instant Universe", opened the AI video generation tool, and registered an account for free trial.

According to a report by IT House on July 26th, Runway, the behind-the-scenes technology company of Instant Universe, was previously invested by Google, and its AI-enabled video editing tool Gen-2 was made public. Users can directly use text prompts to generate "realistic video content" and "automatically edit videos".

Photoshop beta introduces the AI function of "generative expansion", which can easily expand images.

According to the report of IT House on July 27th, Adobe has launched an artificial intelligence function called "Generative Expand", which has been provided to Photoshop beta users. This function allows users to easily expand the image and create a seamless scene effect. Adobe introduced this function in its blog post, and showed its usage and application scenarios.

It is reported that "Generative Expand" is part of the Firefly artificial intelligence project under Adobe. The project initially focused on image generation and text effects, and later added vector recolor and Generative Fill functions. The Generative Fill function allows users to fill the blank areas in the image with one click, and it has been added to the Photoshop beta in May this year. The "Generative Expand" function allows users to expand the canvas of the image and create content matching the original image without giving any hints.

Trailer: Genesis, the first sci-fi movie trailer made entirely by AI, was released online.

According to Machine Heart, a sci-fi movie trailer "Trailer: Genesis", which was all done by AI, became popular on social media. The trailer lasted less than a minute, and everything from image and video synthesis to music editing was done by AI. Nicolas Neubert, the producer, listed the corresponding AI tools, namely, Midjourney to process images, Runway to process videos, Pixabay to process music, and CapCut to edit videos. It is understood that Neubert spent 7 hours, Midjourney generated 316 tips and enlarged 128 images, Runway generated 310 videos, and there was a video with text, and 44 videos were used in the trailer.

Stack Overflow officially launched its OverflowAI code tool.

According to the news of IT House on July 28th, Stack Overflow, a question-and-answer platform for programmers, has quietly "officially announced" its code tool OverflowAI. It is reported that OverflowAI is not a "single product", but a collection of multiple AI tools, and users can use these tools to achieve related applications in a targeted manner.

DeepMind uses AI to achieve controlled nuclear fusion breakthrough: the accuracy of plasma shape simulation is improved by 65%.

According to the science and technology innovation board Journal reported on July 28th, after DeepMind announced last year that it had successfully controlled the nuclear fusion plasma inside the tokamak for the first time, the company announced the latest experimental simulation results, which further improved the plasma shape accuracy by 65%. Related research was submitted to the preprint website ArXiv on July 21st, and the paper was titled "Practical Reinforcement Learning for Magnetic Control of Tokamak".

05. Policy

Hangzhou will accelerate the innovation and development of artificial intelligence industry, and has defined four tasks: computing power support and model ecology.

On July 27th, the General Office of Hangzhou Municipal Government issued the Implementation Opinions of the General Office of Hangzhou Municipal People’s Government on Accelerating the Innovation and Development of Artificial Intelligence Industry. The "Implementation Opinions" pointed out that Hangzhou will thoroughly study and implement the spirit of the important speech of the Supreme Leader General Secretary on artificial intelligence series, take the deep integration of artificial intelligence and the real economy as the main line, and make every effort to build an innovation system from algorithm model innovation breakthrough to industry transformation and application, so as to realize a virtuous circle in which large computing power incubates big models, big models drive big industries and big industries promote big development, and provide strong support for reshaping the first city of the national digital economy at a high level and striving to promote the "two firsts". By 2025, the industrial ecology of "high computing power+strong algorithm+big data" will be basically formed, and Hangzhou will be built into a national computing power cost depression, model output source and data sharing highland.

06. Views

Open AI CEO: AI can improve employee productivity, but it will also create more unemployment.

According to the news of webmaster’s home on July 28th, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said that generative artificial intelligence technologies such as ChatGPT may improve the productivity of many employees in the next few years, but it may also lead to some people losing their jobs. In an interview with Atlantic Monthly, Altman refuted the view that the AI craze will only have a positive impact on employees. He said, "Many people who are engaged in AI pretend that it will only benefit; It will only be a supplement; No one will be replaced. " But the widespread application of AI may also create new jobs. Altman expects to create better jobs in addition to any disrupted jobs, although he is not sure whether the replaced employees can find these new positions.

Musk: The programmer’s favorite Stack Overflow Q&A platform will be replaced by AI model in the future.

According to a report by IT House on July 26th, the number of users of Stack Overflow, a well-known software developer forum operated by Stack Exchange, is gradually declining. A user named mediator shared an article entitled "The Fall of Stack Overflow" with a chart showing that "the traffic of Stack Overflow has decreased by about 50% in the past year and a half, and the number of questions/answers appearing on the website has also decreased by about 50%".

Musk made a brief comment on this article, arguing that such question-and-answer platforms will gradually be replaced by AI models. He said that the Stack Overflow platform was "killed by LLM (Large Language Model)". Musk also said: "LLM will lead to more and more common (question and answer platform) deaths."

Musk: Within two years, it will change from "lack of silicon" to "lack of electricity" and hinder the development of AI.

According to reports from Wall Street, Musk predicted at the energy conference held in Austin last month that with the increase of electric vehicle consumption, the power demand in 2045 will triple compared with the current one. Musk predicts that by 2030, half of the new cars sold worldwide will be electric vehicles. Recently, Musk once again warned that power shortage may have serious consequences, just as the recent lack of core hinders the technology and automobile industries. This time, the lack of electricity may hinder the development of AI. "We will go from … today’s extreme shortage of silicon to … power shortage in two years." He said.

According to the latest report released by Digital Information World, the energy consumption generated by data centers for training AI models will be three times that of conventional cloud work. It is estimated that by 2030, the power demand of data centers in the United States will increase at an annual rate of about 10%.

Viewpoint: Most large models are running with each other. If GPT3.5/4 is open source, it will face a devastating blow.

According to articles published by Wall Street, most large models are running with them. If GPT3.5/4 is open source, it will face a devastating blow. The article believes that, first of all, the gap between major models and Open AI is still obvious, and the market space originally reserved for other major model manufacturers is already very small. The emergence of open source promotes the big model to enter the hundred-model war, but the problem is that the product homogeneity is serious and there is no ability comparable to GPT4, which will lead to the very low discourse power of the big model and the pricing of the big model will only become more and more difficult; Secondly, in order to optimize the output results, large model enterprises need to iterate the model continuously, which requires a large number of professional data feeding, so data enterprise providers will also become an important role restricting the development of large models. Finally, the training cost of the big model is very high. If you want to make a super big model, you have to work hard, that is, to see who can grab more NVIDIA A/H100 chips; Generally speaking, most large model enterprises are faced with the dilemma that it is difficult to collect fees while desperately spending money. Presumably, many large model enterprises will give up this crowded and unprofitable track in the future.

07, research report

Mizuho: NVIDIA’s AI-related revenue is expected to reach 300 billion US dollars in 2027, and its AI server chip market share will be 75% by then.

According to the science and technology innovation board Journal reported on July 25th, Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh recently released a research report that NVIDIA’s AI-related revenue is expected to reach 300 billion US dollars in 2027, when its AI server chip market will still account for 75%. According to the report, with the increasing demand for generative AI, there will be a lot of opportunities for hardware vendors supporting the high computing demand of large language models (LLMs), especially in NVIDIA. However, this does not mean that the market closes the door to AMD. Rakesh predicts that by 2027, AMD’s share of the AI server chip market will be about 5%.

IDC: It is estimated that by 2026, 50% of terminal equipment processors in China will have AI engine function.

According to the science and technology innovation board Journal reported on July 25th, IDC announced a forecast that by 2026, nearly 50% of the terminal devices in China market will have AI engine technology. IDC believes that in the future, AI terminals will be widely developed in the fields of creation and creative future, games and virtual worlds, speech synthesis and conversion, vision and image processing, chat robots, personalized recommendation, medical assistance and so on.

Huatai Securities: It is estimated that by 2030, the regulatory market scale of domestic AI big model will reach 50-100 billion yuan.

According to the science and technology innovation board Journal reported on July 25th, Huatai Securities released a research report saying that the scale of China’s artificial intelligence core industry will exceed 1 trillion yuan in 2030. In general, the proportion of safety in information investment is at least 5%-10%, and due to the particularity of AI big model, AI safety will become a problem that all participants must consider in the future, which runs through the whole process from data labeling, model training and development, content generation and application development, and the investment is no less than that of traditional safety investment. Therefore, assuming that the proportion of AI supervision in the whole industrial chain is 5%-10%, it is expected to reach 2000.

ABI Research: In the next seven years, generative AI will bring in more than $450 billion in revenue.

According to a report by the webmaster’s house on July 27th, ABI Research, a global technical intelligence company, predicts that in the next seven years, generative AI will bring more than $450 billion to the enterprise market in 12 different vertical fields.

Although there are hundreds of application cases of generative AI in enterprise vertical field, its adoption will be divided into three stages. The current stage is internal focus, which increases the productivity of employees by providing generating tools. The second stage will have a greater impact on external services, and enterprises will be able to start building products or services around generative AI. The third stage will be the most valuable creator, and the manufacturing and logistics industries will use generative AI to automate and optimize processes. At present, the enterprise market is still in its infancy, and most markets are still exploring use cases and deployment options.

CCTV News:Pay attention to the holiday consumer market. At present, it is the New Year’s Day holiday, and the Spring Festival is approaching. Many people have begun to buy new year’s goods, and the online and offline consumption fever continues to climb. Recently, the sales of smart home appliances, fitness equipment and flowers and green plants have doubled.

In Chencun Flower World, Shunde, Guangdong, the workers in Phalaenopsis planting base are busy pruning the residual branches, and the packaged flowers are uniformly labeled "Happy New Year" and will be sent to all parts of the country.

Wu Xiaohua, manager of Phalaenopsis planting base:They are all queued for shipment. I am very happy. I do it every day. I don’t have enough flowers. I have to go outside to adjust the goods.

There are also many local people who go to the flower market to choose flowers and green plants. In addition to palm flowers such as Phalaenopsis, Hylaenopsis grandiflora and Anthurium andraeanum, beautiful flowers such as lilies and money trees are also very popular.

In Dounan Flower Market in Kunming, there are plenty of festive flowers with various characteristics. Red fresh cut flowers such as roses and Anthurium and green plants of seasonal flowers such as lily and holly sell well.

Luo Jianhong, Executive General Manager of Kunming Dounan Agricultural Products Auction Co., Ltd.:Like our whole market, all kinds of products add up to tens of millions of pieces a day.

In view of the sporadic epidemic situation in Kunming a few days ago, Dounan Flower Market strictly does a good job in epidemic prevention and control, and arranges large-scale regular disinfection twice a day. In order to reduce unnecessary personnel flow, the market has also opened an online sales platform to help flower farmers sell online by sending orders.

Luo Jianhong, Executive General Manager of Kunming Dounan Agricultural Products Auction Co., Ltd.:There are many modes of order group purchase, so they don’t have to come to our site and make reservations through the platform. We will then distribute the orders to farmers, so that farmers can sell their products directly to consumers through the platform, and truly realize the mode of fixing production by sales.

　　Beijing, China, September 16 (Reporter Zhou Yifan Yu Zhongtao) According to the Voice of China report, today is the second day of the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. Eating moon cakes is a must-have program for every family in the Mid-Autumn Festival. I wonder where you bought the moon cakes that your family ate this year? Physical store or online platform?

　　Nowadays, it is nothing new to buy moon cakes online. Many moon cake brands also have flagship stores online. But the novelty of this "buying moon cakes online" we are talking about today is that the seller is not a company that makes moon cakes, but a private person.

　　This is the so-called "private moon cakes". To put it bluntly, it is the moon cakes sold by individuals through online platforms such as Taobao and WeChat friends circle. These moon cakes are generally made by themselves, without adding, and are purely handmade, which is somewhat similar to those online food delivery platforms that focus on private dishes cooked by their own families.

　　From this year on, this mooncake has a national standard, and many problems have been exposed in the so-called private cuisine, including lack of qualification, worrying hygiene and so on. Is the quality of "private mooncakes" reliable?

　　At the end of last year, the new national standard for moon cakes was officially implemented. This recommended standard requires the classification, fat content, sugar content, protein and so on of moon cakes. On the first Mid-Autumn Festival since the implementation of the new national standard for mooncakes, "private mooncakes" came into consumers’ sight. Search for keywords in Taobao, and more than 400 treasures will appear. The one with the highest sales volume shows that the monthly sales of private mooncakes is nearly 2,000 pieces.

　　The seller declared that "it is handmade without any additives". "Generally, it can be kept for about ten days, because we all have no additives, we all make them ourselves, and we don’t do them with additives."

　　Similar private moon cakes have also appeared in many people’s circle of friends. Endorsement by acquaintances, coupled with delicious and safe gimmicks, private mooncakes are generally very popular. Last year, Mr. Wang tried to sell homemade fresh meat mooncakes in a circle of friends: "In a circle of friends, because there were too many people who asked me for them last year, I said, OK, let’s start selling them, and then I sold almost 3 or 400, and then I felt that this business was quite easy."

　　The sales volume is huge and there is room for profit. In order to convince consumers to trust the quality of products, some WeChat sellers will also make videos of their own moon cakes and send them online. Miss Li from Liaoning said, "You can really see them through small videos. This intuitive way makes me believe in this kind of thing."

　　However, although the video can partially show the production process, consumers can’t judge the ingredients in the raw materials. Some media sent four different homemade moon cakes online for inspection, and two of them detected sodium cyclamate: "Its (sodium cyclamate) is 0.15 g/kg, which means that the two private kitchens can’t be said to be zero-added, because sodium cyclamate has been detected, and everyone will know whether it is zero-added."

　　In addition, after the production of moon cakes, there may be hidden dangers of food safety due to the limited storage capacity of family workshops. Gwan Chin, director of the Food Circulation Supervision Department of Nanjing Food and Drug Administration, said that it is actually illegal to sell directly to friends in the WeChat circle of friends, and the quality is not guaranteed, especially the storage period of moon cakes, or the storage temperature, which has a certain impact on the quality.

　　From the packaging point of view, these "private" moon cakes do not indicate the manufacturer, production date, shelf life, food production license number and food label, which also does not comply with the law. An industry insider who once worked in a well-known pastry company in Shanghai said: "Mooncakes sold in China need a qualified food factory to make and process them, and they need to be labeled with all ingredients, as well as the factory and contact information for processing them. Private mooncakes can’t do this because they are all made by themselves."

　　In July this year, the State Food and Drug Administration issued the Measures for the Investigation and Punishment of Internet Food Safety Violations, which will be implemented on October 1 this year. It stipulates that online food operators should obtain food business licenses or filing vouchers according to law. Those who have not obtained the food business license or filing certificate shall not engage in online food business activities. Liu Deliang, director of the Asia-Pacific Network Law Research Center, said that as long as there is sales behavior, no matter what platform, it should be bound by relevant laws and regulations:

　　"If you are a good friend, you don’t need food safety and health when you eat at home. The key is that it can target an unspecified third party, and the scope is relatively large. In this case, it is no different from roadside hawking, stall selling and Tmall Taobao. Around food safety, the law has corresponding provisions."

　　However, because it is a relatively closed sales environment, it is difficult for the regulatory authorities to investigate and deal with these private mooncakes that are sold in the WeChat circle of friends and have a huge sales volume. HanDong, deputy director of the Food Circulation Supervision Department of Hefei Food and Drug Administration, suggested that consumers should still choose qualified manufacturers: "Third-party platforms must provide information about sellers. If consumers have problems, they can first look for third-party platforms. WeChat circle is not a form of online sales of third-party platforms. From a certain point of view, it belongs to private friends who buy in mutual trust. Whether it has production capacity, quality and hygiene is guaranteed, Consumers should also keep their eyes open. We suggest buying moon cakes or going to a qualified physical store. If you buy them online, you should go through a third-party platform, which is also guaranteed. "

　　In terms of scale, Gree Electric lags behind Midea Group in air conditioning, small household appliances and diversified businesses, with a total revenue difference of 98 billion yuan in the first half of 2023. However, judging from many data, Gree still has its own advantages, such as abundant cash on the account and high gross profit margin of air-conditioning business.

　　author　|Lin Xia Xi

　　source　| City boundary

　　Revenue reached a new high in the first half of the year, and net profit did not return to a high point.

　　If one sentence is used to describe the semi-annual report of 2023 released by Gree Electric on the last day of August, it is that "all aspects are recovering, but many data are hidden".

　　Let’s look at the overall revenue and net profit performance-99.79 billion yuan and 12.35 billion yuan in the first half of the year, respectively. The former hit a record high, but the year-on-year growth rate was small, only 4.16%, while the latter maintained a growth rate of 14%, but it still did not reach the level of 2018 and 2019.

　　Such growth has not kept pace with the market.

　　Under the influence of El Ni? o phenomenon, there was a rare high temperature in the first half of 2023. Stimulated by this, although the real estate industry remained sluggish, the sales and retail sales of domestic household air conditioners increased by 12.72% and 16% respectively, which was much higher than Gree’s overall income and air conditioning income.

　　On a larger scale, Gree Electric, which lags behind the market, is also gradually falling behind in the world. According to the latest data, the threshold for entering the Fortune 500 in 2023 is 225.165 billion yuan, while Gree’s annual income in 2022 is 190.151 billion yuan, and there is still a certain gap. From 2019 to 2022, Gree Electric’s ranking in the Fortune 500 has also dropped from 414 to 487.

　　In terms of revenue composition, Gree Electric’s revenue of 99.79 billion yuan in the first half of this year accounted for more than 1% of the business, including air-conditioning business that contributed 70% of the revenue, eco-agriculture and green energy services that contributed 2.92% of the revenue (mainly including buses and energy storage equipment under Gree Titanium), and small household appliances that contributed 2.18%.

　　In addition, industrial products and other businesses contribute a total of 23.6% of revenue, which is actually quite eye-catching.

　　A small number of industrial products mainly include compressors, motors, molds, etc., which belong to To B business, while other businesses mainly focus on purchasing upstream raw materials, mainly to play the role of bulk purchasing and lowering prices. After purchasing, they are sold to upstream processing enterprises, with a gross profit margin of only about 2%, which mainly plays a role in expanding income scale from a financial point of view.

　　It is worth noting that although the overall income of Gree Electric reached a new high in the first half of 2023, if the "other businesses" that hardly make money are deducted, the total remaining income has not actually returned to the level of the first half of 2019, and the income from air conditioning business alone is even worse than that in 2018 and 2019.

　　In addition to self-comparison, we can better understand what such data means by horizontally comparing Gree Electric with its old rival Midea Group. In the first half of 2023, Gree lost 98.006 billion yuan compared with Midea Group’s total revenue of 197.796 billion yuan.

　　Fairer, if the "other income" of the two companies is deducted, Gree has fallen behind the United States by 100.969 billion yuan, which is the biggest gap in the main income of the two companies in history.

　　So where is the difference between the 100 billion yuan?

　　In terms of air-conditioning business, Gree has been at a disadvantage since 2020, and the gap has been widening in the past three years. The gap in the semi-annual report has expanded to 22 billion yuan; In the field of small household appliances, in the first half of 2023, Gree Electric’s income was only 2.177 billion yuan, while Midea Group’s income was 30 times higher than that of 68.136 billion yuan.

　　In addition to home appliances, Gree Electric’s industrial products, green energy and smart equipment businesses generated a total revenue of 8.7 billion yuan in the first half of 2023, which is about half of the revenue of Midea Group’s robots and automation systems.

　　It is worth noting that both companies are making efforts in the automation and intelligent production of To B, but the paths are different.

　　Judging from the semi-annual report, Gree Electric emphasized the technology and quality of core components such as compressors (core devices of air conditioners) and motors (power sources of electrical appliances), but Midea Group emphasized the complete solutions for different scenarios in the fields of medical care, entertainment and consumption.

　　If we distinguish between domestic and foreign income, after deducting "other business", Gree Electric’s domestic income actually lagged behind that of the United States 10 years ago, but the gap was small. Until 2023, the gap in the semi-annual report has expanded to 47.5 billion yuan, the highest in the past years, equivalent to 59% of Gree’s only beauty.

　　The bigger gap is overseas income. The gap between the two has expanded from 18.5 billion yuan in the first half of 2014 to 67.7 billion yuan in the first half of 2023. Gree’s current overseas income is only equivalent to 16% of Midea Group.

　　At least in terms of scale, Gree Electric has indeed fallen behind Midea Group in terms of air conditioning, small household appliances and diversified businesses, and the gap has also reached a new height.

　　"Sequela" of Dealer’s Rebellion

　　In addition to the overall performance, a series of subtle changes can be seen in the semi-annual report in 2023, which may be related to the "rebellion" of some dealers in Gree Electric last year.

　　In the first half of 2023, the sales expenses in Gree Electric increased by 71.01% year-on-year. The semi-annual report showed that it was mainly due to the increase in product installation and maintenance fees, but the air-conditioning revenue in the current period only increased by 1.82% year-on-year, which was in sharp contrast.

　　Although in absolute terms, the sales expenses of 8.41 billion yuan in the first half of the year are not the highest in the semi-annual reports over the years, it is the first time to look through the financial reports over the years, like in the first half of 2023, because of the installation and maintenance costs, the sales expenses have risen sharply.

　　As a leader in the field of air conditioning, the probability of a sudden surge in maintenance costs due to quality problems in the first half of the year is not great, so it is more likely that the installation costs have increased substantially. But why did the air conditioner sell less than 2% more, and the sales cost rose by 71% because of the installation cost?

　　In fact, the after-sales business of air conditioners has always been the responsibility of distributors all over the country. They also manage the air conditioner sales business and after-sales business including installation and maintenance in the corresponding areas. When installation services occur, the distributors will charge certain fees from the air conditioner manufacturers, and they will also charge customers aerial work fees, material fees and so on according to the situation.

　　In September, 2022, Gree fell out with dealers in Hebei, who published a Notice, describing a series of inside information that Zhuhai Gree headquarters shut down the after-sales service management authority of Hebei Gree Company, and after Gree Zhuhai Hengge took over the after-sales service in this area, it proposed sales performance tasks for maintenance points, changed the preferential policies that Hebei Gree used to provide such as free overhead fees and free punching fees, and so on.

　　After the two parties parted ways, the new distributor that Gree Electric was looking for in Hebei surfaced-Eye-searching showed that Gree Zhuhai Hengge Digital Technology Co., Ltd. mentioned in the Notice was previously owned by Zhuhai Hengge Trading and Jiangsu Saifu Green Food Development Co., Ltd., but the latter withdrew in May this year and Xiamen Saifu Trading Co., Ltd. became the new shareholder.

　　It is noteworthy that Liu Qiangdong and ZhangZetian once appeared among the shareholders of Jiangsu Saif Green Food, but they withdrew from the shareholders in 2020. The legal representative of Xiamen Saif Trade, the new shareholder, is Zuo Yujie, just like Jiangsu Saif Green Food.

　　According to the public information, Zuo Yujie has a close relationship with JD.COM. He used to work in JD.COM and still serves as the chairman of Runjing Information Technology Co., Ltd., which is the operator of JD.COM Wine World, and JD.COM Wine World is an omni-channel wine retail enterprise invested by JD.COM.

　　In addition to the 71% increase in sales expenses, the contractual liabilities of Gree Electric (that is, the advance payment paid by dealers) rose by 79.7% to 28.972 billion yuan at the end of June 2023, while the operating cash inflow increased by 40% to 127.9 billion yuan year-on-year. It can be considered that the changes in important distribution channels have brought a series of effects, that is, new dealers have large-scale purchase demand, which brings considerable cash flow and contractual liabilities, and at the same time corresponds to the regional after-sales service system.

　　In addition, considering the above indicators comprehensively, there is another possibility, that is, delaying the recognition of income and recognizing expenses in advance.

　　In this case, a considerable part of the goods have been sent to the dealers, and the payment has been received, and the installation has been completed after the sales by the dealers. However, Gree Electric did not settle this part of the payment with the dealers for some reason, which led to the fact that it is still reflected in the books as contract liabilities rather than income. However, the installation expenses that have occurred have already been reflected in the sales expenses because they need to be included in the corresponding period, which leads to a huge difference between the increase of income and sales expenses.

　　In either case, the high probability is related to the change of dealers, and it can also be regarded as the sequela of the "rebellion" of important dealers in Gree Electric in 2022.

　　Gree still has its own advantages.

　　Even if the overall performance lags behind Midea Group, many indicators in the 2023 semi-annual report are affected by changes in dealers, but from many data, Gree still has its own advantages.

　　The first is ample cash in the account.

　　At the end of June, 2023, Gree’s book cash and wealth management reached about 200 billion yuan, more than all the cash and wealth management on the books of Midea and Haier combined, but it should also be noted that 64.219 billion yuan of them were restricted funds.

　　At the same time, the gross profit margin of Gree Electric’s air-conditioning business returned to a high level of 35.69% in the first half of 2023. In the same period, Midea Group’s air-conditioning gross profit margin was only 23.29%, while Haier Zhijia’s was 28.62%, which was related to Gree’s greater focus on air-conditioning, which led to higher overall asset operation efficiency, as well as a certain cost advantage gained by centralized procurement of raw materials, which was of course a direct manifestation of its brand premium.

　　If we compare the per capita income and per capita profit, Gree Electric will be the highest in 2022. Because of this, although the total revenue of Gree Electric and Midea Group in the first half of the year is nearly 100 billion yuan, the difference in net profit is only about 6 billion yuan. Haier Zhijia, whose income is 32% higher than that of Gree Electric, has a net profit of only 73% of that of Gree Electric.

　　These all point to one of Gree Electric’s greatest advantages-that is, it can earn more money with higher efficiency in the established field of air-conditioning business.

　　However, the capital market of "voting with your feet" only gives Gree Electric about half of the current market value of Midea Group, which shows that it is not enough to have a strong ability to make money in one field, and the scale of revenue is also very important.

　　In contrast, Midea Group seems to have chosen another path.

　　Ten years ago, Midea Group began to lay out multi-category household appliances and overseas business. Although at a certain stage, the product lines were messy and redundant, it could be improved through necessary simplification and transformation. The longer-term significance lies in broadening the possibilities and having a greater first-Mover advantage in related tracks. Especially when the external environment changes, such advantages may bring subversive development.

　　It’s not that Gree Electric doesn’t want to embrace diversity and look for the second or even third curve, but the exploration in these years has not been smooth. Compared with the traditional thinking, the early smart phone project was flooded, but the unreliable Yinlong was chosen for the new energy grand track, and the small household appliances business was slow to progress because it entered too late, not to mention the overseas market that could not open the situation by adopting conservative strategies.

　　Interestingly, just like Midea Group, which has developed a number of business segments as the driving force for subsequent growth, He Xiangjian also retired early and chose Fang Hongbo as his successor. On the other hand, in Gree Electric, the issue of successor has been unresolved, and 69-year-old Dong Mingzhu is still closely bound with brand IP and active in front of the stage.

　　The difference between the two can also be seen from the age of management. The average age of 16 Dong Jiangao in Gree Electric (one of whom has no information) is 57 years old, and only one of them, Dong Mingzhu, has an annual salary of more than 5 million yuan, with a salary of 11.42 million yuan in 2022.

　　In contrast, the average age of the 22 directors of Midea Group is 50 years old, and 8 of them earn more than 5 million yuan a year. Among them, the chairman Fang Hongbo earned 11.3 million yuan in 2022, while the average age of the 21 directors of Haier Zhijia is 52 years old, and no one earns more than 5 million yuan a year.

　　Even if we only consider the air-conditioning business, it is not difficult for Gree Electric to maintain single-digit growth, and it is understandable to describe it as a relatively stable and solid manufacturing industry. However, in order to break through the existing situation and catch up with the rhythm of the times again, Gree obviously has to continue to look for its own possibilities.

(Disclaimer: This article only represents the author’s point of view and does not represent the position of Sina. com. )

　　Northeast Network August 22nd (intern reporter Liu Jingyao reporter john young Sun Yingxin) Blind roads and ramps on pedestrian roads, love seats on buses, elevators and handrails in stairwells, voice signal lights at intersections … The barrier-free facilities that can be seen everywhere in the city are always in the nuances, providing help for some specific groups. During the investigation and interview, the reporter found that there are still some problems in the barrier-free facilities in public places in Harbin, some facilities can not serve the purpose of facilitating others, and some places even have no barrier-free facilities.

　　At the stairs at the entrance of Nangang Bus Terminal in Harbin, a ramp is only an iron plate erected on the stairs. The steep slope is a great "challenge" for people who need to travel in wheelchairs. Inside the passenger station, the reporter found that the ticket window was set on the second floor, while the security check and pit stop needed to be carried out on the first floor. There was no straight ladder in the passenger station, nor was there a special barrier-free ticket window and security check channel.

　　On the sidewalks near the Lin Qiu business district in Harbin, but only 200 meters away, many blind roads are damaged, or horse gourd appears on the blind road. In the direction of Hongjun Street near Postal Street, the blind brick on the ground has already become blurred. How can a "flat" blind brick guide the blind?

　　When the reporter visited nangang district Library, he found that colorful blind bricks were stuck on the ground of the lobby on the first floor, and there was a reading room for hearing-impaired people on the first floor, which greatly facilitated the reading of special groups. However, there are still some problems. Although the first floor of the library is equipped with a bathroom dedicated to barrier-free people, when the door is opened, it is found that the toilet is full of sundries, and the words "No use" are stuck on the water tank. The bathroom on the third floor is not dedicated to barrier-free people. In the elevator room on the first floor of the library, there is a barrier-free passage on the right side of the three steps in front of the elevator, but two chains are tied above it.

　　Compared with the chaotic situation of Nangang Passenger Station, the barrier-free facilities of the newly built North Station of Harbin Station are relatively perfect. The neat and straight blind road at the entrance of the North Square leads directly to the ticket hall, the lower button position inside and outside the barrier-free elevator and the lower window design at the barrier-free ticket window can fully meet the needs of children and groups who need to travel in wheelchairs.

　　It is understood that China has strict standards for the design and specification of barrier-free facilities in urban roads and public places. However, recently, it was found through a reporter’s visit that there are many problems in barrier-free facilities in public places in Harbin, and "barrier-free facilities" will even cause greater obstacles.

　　In the work report made by the Seventh Congress of the Provincial Disabled Persons’ Federation, it is pointed out that the province will implement the Regulations on the Construction of Barrier-free Environment and persist in comprehensively promoting the construction of barrier-free environment in urban and rural areas according to law. In particular, we will strengthen the construction of barrier-free facilities in new and rebuilt public infrastructure and residential areas, accelerate the barrier-free transformation of public facilities such as government agencies, public services, public transportation, social welfare and communities, strengthen the construction of information barrier-free, set up barrier-free parking spaces in public parking areas according to regulations, and strengthen the daily maintenance, management and supervision of the use of barrier-free facilities.

　　Zhao Fenghe, president of the Heilongjiang Association for the Blind, said that barrier-free environment construction is not only related to the disabled, but also to the elderly and children. It can be said that it is related to every corner of every family life. I hope the relevant responsible departments will not regard barrier-free construction as a "weak job". He looks forward to a more humane and warmer barrier-free environment.