Artificial intelligence, AR is one of the few circuits that are more recognized by investors. The development of VR and VR is ups and downs, and the investment cycle is also the same, but now it seems to have reached a climbing stage.
“This year’s big capital market environment is not good, including artificial intelligence, AR is one of the few circuits that are more recognized by investors,” at the Cannes International Creative Festival held recently, Yuanhe origin Venture Partners Le Jinxin said in an interview.
When the industry was hot, Facebook had spent $2 billion to acquire Oculus, and Magic Leap frequently raised funds without products. But from the end of 2016 to 2017, it has reached the industry freezing point.
According to market research firm Crunchbase, the global VR/AR venture capital investment in the first quarter of 2017 was only $200 million (a total of 26 companies received investment), compared to $1 billion in the same period in 2016 (29 Home company financing), which plunged 80%, also created the lowest record of investment in the past year.
After the bubble, all investment behaviors return to rationality. According to Le Jinxin, before investing in joint advanced technology, it is because of the real commercial landing scenes, such as education and training, it is not the state of telling stories and telling cases. At the same time, they are more concerned about the maturity of the investment target business and the possibility of commercial landing. In this context, a good team will be chosen.
For Yuanhe, now you can see more than 100 AR startups in a year, and then choose one or two potential stocks that can grow into unicorns. Why choose to invest in AR, not VR, Le Jinxin has its own judgment. He believes that AR is more promising. Because the real world is changing, different cultures, different races, and different geographical locations require more technology to be integrated, and AR can.
MarketandMarkets, the world’s second-largest market research consultancy, reports that the AR market is expected to grow from $11 billion in 2018 to $60 billion in 2023. Among them, AR’s demand growth in the fields of medical, retail, e-commerce, etc. will drive the rapid development of AR market size and investment. The size of the VR market is expected to grow from $7.9 billion in 2018 to $34 billion in 2023.
The following is the interview for Yuanhe origin venture partner Le Jinxin:
: Clouds from Yuanhe beforeThe growth of science and technology and Cambrian is particularly good. In the past three or four years, it became a unicorn of two to three billion dollars, and they all came to the stage of listing. Investing in AR startups is easy, what are their expectations?
Le Jinxin: We tracked the track of AR, starting in 2009. A technology from the out to the attention of the public, and then to the well-known people, to the bubble period, many people get off the vehicle, and then can be accepted by the vast application scenarios.
We have seen the convergence of 5G, high-precision positioning technology and 3D sensing technology, and the communication and interaction methods brought to AR have been convenient and mature enough. In the past, AR was a connection between the real world and the virtual world. Now many functions are truly superimposed and are considered to be “the twin world.” Under the support of communication technology, there will be more physical scenes in the future to superimpose AR content. In order to meet the needs of the senses, this demand is not so strong, but the information and knowledge presented by AR will be because this is a strong demand of people.
In this context, we invested in easy-to-receive. In addition to hoping to become a unicorn, I hope that it can carry more.
: Many unicorns are growing very fast now, but growth space and future commercialization are often out of sync, and sometimes they may be quite different from your expectations.
Le Jinxin: In public, I don’t advocate the mention of this unicorn now. We are not a unicorn for a unicorn. We look at a big track and have a high growth. Sex, the ceiling is high enough, this is our big premise. Entering this track, we choose players like this, with a variety of excellent numbers and genes in it.
The pre-judgment of the macro environment of the entire track is that we have no way to grasp it. We can only foresee that since we have chosen a ship, we must follow it. Entrepreneur’s expectations are relatively optimistic, but on our investor side, a downward revision has been made.
: How many AR projects will you watch in a year?
Le Jinxin: If you are on the track of AR, we may have seen hundreds of companies on the big track.
Now we all see that AR is still in the form of mobile phones. The next step may be AR glasses, from chips to key components to modules, then to products, to applications. In a specific track, we basically pick one in a hundred. We will vote for 1-2 projects a year, and we will continue to lay out on this track in the future.
: The whole environment is not good. Does it affect the dimension when we look at the project?
Le Jinxin: The first one is indeed related to the current macro environment. This is a specific digital support. The amount and amount of financing has dropped sharply. After the dot-com bubble burst, it is now turning to entrepreneurial enterprises represented by technological innovation, including the introduction of the science and technology board. Because the model represented by the Internet is innovative, the first one is actually new, and the second is fast enough. In this context, a good team has sufficient execution power. Once the relationship is verified, it is hard to save money. It used to be a foolish operation, and there is no need to look at too many things.
But the company represented by technological innovation, from the technology of a laboratory, to the maturity, to the feedback of the industry, to the training, to the maturity, to the market, to the customer feedback, the whole The cycle will be lengthened. After the extension, the dimensions and pre-judgment of investors will be more trouble-free. This will require more investors. If you only look at the first two dimensions before, you have no experience to see a lot of customer feedback. As well as the quality problems encountered, you have no way to understand the long cycle. This was originally a problem with the conversion of a model.
The other one is that the big environment is not good. Everyone has less money, but they have to look at the project every day. I used to watch three projects one day and I immediately voted. Now I may see a project for three days. It looks fine. I don’t think this is a bad thing. For our investors, there is enough opportunity to observe the company. The investment also has to master this rhythm. When the whole economy is very exaggerated, the investment is also getting together. In fact, it seems to us to be a chaos.
: What are the key directions of our investment this year? Will there be adjustments?
Le Jinxin: We are okay, every organization is different. We have invested in high-tech fields for the past 20 years. We have enjoyed slow and slow beats all the way. We were also under pressure and pain.
VR gyro: From the perspective of the entire industry chain, how do you see AR and VR?
Le Jinxin: For people outside the industry, everyone will call it XR or MR and combine it. The core essence is to add single-dimensional or two-dimensional objects presented in the original physical world to three-dimensional or multi-dimensional information. From a professional point of view, it is necessary to clarify this matter, AR is AR, VR is VR, and their application scenarios and implementation technologies are completely different.
I think AR is more promising, because VR is an immersive scene. Today’s technology can completely virtualize a scene, and everyone can play it inside. But for AR, the real world is changing, different cultures, different races, different geographies.Location, need to integrate more technology in it. Conversely, the challenges facing AR are even greater.