Electronic enthusiasts eight o'clock: The US Emerging Technology Center (ETC) held its opening ceremony in its office in San Jose, Silicon Valley on the 27th. Hu Ziqiang, vice president and chief technology officer of Midea Group, told Tencent Technology on the same day. The purpose of setting up a research and development center in Silicon Valley is to combine the intelligent development strategy of the United States to apply artificial intelligence technology to specific products.

After the opening ceremony of the day, Wang Dongyan, the head and vice president of Midea’s Future Technology Center, told Tencent Technology that in the next five years, Midea will invest $250 million in the R&D center for artificial intelligence, chips, sensors and robotics. In the research and development, the center has already recruited 20 employees, and plans to expand the R&D team to about 100 people in the future.

Midea's Future Technology Center is located in the hinterland of Silicon Valley and covers an area of ​​about 10,000 feet. It is surrounded by high-tech companies such as Samsung and Cisco.

The well-known domestic appliance group Midea is now a global company with more than 60 branches overseas, and its products have been sold to more than 200 countries and regions. Hu Ziqiang said that more than half of Midea’s product sales come from China. Overseas markets other than. Last year, Midea became the first company in China's home appliance industry to rank among the Fortune Global 500 companies.

When talking about the logic of setting up a research and development center in Silicon Valley, Hu Ziqiang said that the most important thing for the United States is the talents in the Silicon Valley region and the ecological environment in the Silicon Valley region. This ecological environment includes high-end talents, entrepreneurial atmosphere, and university research resources. factor.

Wang Dongyan told Tencent that unlike most other Chinese companies setting up branches overseas, the US Silicon Valley R&D Center has strong autonomy.

“We are operating as a Start-up (start-up company),” said Wang Dongyan. “It’s not possible to rule out the possibility of independent listing in the future.”

Wang Dongyan joined Midea in the second half of last year and was responsible for the formation of the Silicon Valley R&D Center. Prior to that, he worked for Cisco, NetApp, Samsung and other companies for nearly 20 years. Under his leadership, the US R&D center also reflected Silicon Valley. Style, for example, a detail, each meeting room has its own unique name, such as "Mission Impossible", "Minimum Viable Product" and so on.

He told Tencent that the server equipment for deep learning consisting of hundreds of NVIDIA high-end GPUs Tesla P100 has been assembled and will be put into use, and this part of the investment is "millions of dollars."

Wang Dongyan said that the results of R&D in the Silicon Valley R&D Center will not only be directly applied to Midea's products, but also applied to the company's own process optimization, including inventory, marketing, and finance.

“Our R&D center is planning to implement artificial intelligence to implement products, not just at the conceptual level,” said Wang Dongyan.

"Future artificial intelligence algorithms and technical achievements do not rule out the use of such models to third parties," Wang Dongyan said. "In short, we have strong independence."

In recent years, with the rise of artificial intelligence, machine automation, etc., as the beauty of the traditional home appliance industry, the promotion of industrial 4.0 upgrade, before the establishment of the Silicon Valley R & D center, has completed the establishment of overseas research institutions in Japan, Italy, the future An overseas R&D center will be further established in industrial centers such as Germany.

Last year, Midea successfully acquired Kuka, the German industrial robot company, which is considered to be an important step in its true move towards the industry 4.0 era. In an interview with Tencent Technology on the same day, Hu Ziqiang said that after the acquisition of KUKA in the United States, it will further combine KUKA's advantages in robotic automation production, further refine and digitize its manufacturing process, and from the past, it is good at auto assembly and assembly. Work, further expand to the assembly work of more sophisticated appliances and other equipment, and add artificial intelligence algorithms to further enhance the intelligence.

Hu Ziqiang also revealed to Tencent Technology that for the acquisition of KUKA, Midea adopted a gradual and progressive strategy, first 25% of shares, and finally held nearly 100% of shares, successfully passed the anti-monopoly review of the European Commission.

Hu Ziqiang stressed that in fact, people's impressions of a traditional home appliance company in the past need to be changed. At present, the United States is already an enterprise that focuses on the industrial chain upgrade of industrial production, and is more focused on the accumulation and development of the underlying technology.

At present, the proportion of investment in R&D investment in the United States has gradually increased from 2.9% in 2012 to 3.8% in 2015. This proportion ranks first in the industry and has 5,427 invention patents in household appliances. First, there are 11 R&D centers in 6 countries around the world. The proportion of R&D personnel to non-production personnel reached 47% in 2015, and plans to further increase to 68% by 2018.

In recent years, Internet companies have been involved in the impact of smart hardware on the traditional home appliance industry. Hu Ziqiang said that as a beauty, he is willing to learn the good practices of Internet companies in this respect, but the United States still believes that only truly technical content. Products that can bring real use and value to users can ultimately win consumers in the market.

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