What's wrong with me being a rich man?

Chapter 583 Pattern
Linggang is a company that prioritizes technology over sales.

Since its inception, the company has only had two sales representatives. Founder and President Li Yifan believes that for niche products like LiDAR, as long as you present good performance to customers, that's pretty much all that matters.

If that still doesn't work, we can temporarily borrow a few sales representatives from silicon carbide companies, and we won't have to pay their salaries ourselves.

He was very satisfied with his performance in successfully persuading customers to become shareholders. Two days later, when he received a purchase call from Andrew Ng of Baidu, he used Huawei's interest as leverage to negotiate further financing.

Andrew Ng wasn't surprised that Huawei planned to invest in Linggang, since there aren't many companies in China doing autonomous driving research. However, when he heard that a closed-door exchange meeting on autonomous driving was being held in Lingang, he immediately became interested and offered to attend.

He then called his old friend Yu Kai to ask if he knew about the meeting in Lingang.

"It wasn't a formal meeting, just some discussions," Yu Kai replied. "We talked about research from Apple, Google, and Wall Street, the current state of global autonomous driving theory, and saw what everyone's ideas were."

Andrew Ng asked in bewilderment, "How did you know?"

Yu Kai replied, "I'm chatting with them in Lingang, He Kaiming and the others are here too."

He was referring to a member of the DLF Foundation.

Andrew Ng was taken aback: "Why didn't you call me? Aren't I an advisor to the foundation?"

Yu Kai explained, "I see you're too busy with your work at Baidu, and this isn't a formal meeting."

Andrew Ng is Baidu's chief scientist, in charge of Baidu Research Institute. Autonomous driving is positioned as an important application scenario for Baidu's AI strategy. Now that he heard about this exchange in Lingang, he was determined not to miss it.

Yu Kai did not make any further excuses, and believed that President Yu would not mind his old friend's presence.

After giving a brief explanation of his work, Andrew Ng headed straight for Lingang, where he received a call from Li Yanhong on the way.

Li Yanhong found it strange that Andrew Ng suddenly missed an important company meeting, but then rushed off to Lingang.

“Mr. Li, there’s a discussion about autonomous driving in Lingang. I’d like to go take a look.” Andrew Ng didn’t try to hide anything.

Li Yanhong laughed and said, "Can Lingang's research on autonomous driving be better than ours?"

He didn't hear an immediate reply on the phone, and his brows furrowed involuntarily.

“The Silicon Carbon Group focuses on the manufacturing of new energy vehicles and I haven’t heard much about its efforts in autonomous driving research. However, deep learning is indispensable for developing autonomous driving,” Andrew Ng said objectively. “There is a deep learning foundation in Lingang, which must have its merits.”

This has always been one of the things that Andrew Ng appreciates about Lingang. The carbon silicon group is also under considerable financial pressure in manufacturing cars, but President Yu still helped to raise funds and set up this organization. Of course, stock speculation is indeed a rather strange thing.

Li Yanhong wouldn't call him back halfway, she just joked, "Okay, Dr. Wu, then go ahead, just don't get tricked by President Yu."

Andrew Ng laughed heartily: "No, no."

After ending the call, his thoughts were wandering between autonomous driving and Baidu-related matters. After a long while, he said to his colleague Wang Jin, "Baidu should focus more on autonomous driving."

Wang Jin, who is specifically in charge of autonomous driving research and development, nodded upon hearing this and said, "I think President Li means to establish an autonomous driving business unit within the year, but judging from the current research and development and global technological progress, it may not be that easy."

He paused, then pondered for a moment and said, "Tesla's Musk says they can achieve self-driving within the next few years, and they're still quite optimistic about it."

At the beginning of the year, Musk stated at the NVIDIA GTC conference that he considers autonomous driving a given and that it will be realized within a few years.

Andrew Ng shook his head: "It's impossible to be that fast. The development of technology isn't that optimistic, but it's not that pessimistic either." But in any case, with the impact of new energy on the automotive industry, research in this area is indeed accelerating.

The small team from Baidu Research Institute arrived in Lingang in the afternoon and was immediately welcomed.

Despite it being called an informal meeting, Wu En was surprised when he arrived at the venue. There were members of the DLF Foundation, Horizon Robotics, Yu Kai's hardware research company, a joint team from Silicon Carbon Group and Linggang Company, and the Huawei delegation that was visiting Lingang.

Currently, there is a good wave of research and development in autonomous driving in China. Not only do major universities have related projects, but traditional car companies have also established relevant R&D teams. However, only a few companies have the resources and capabilities.

Baidu goes without saying, and Alibaba is practically a third party. Its ET Logistics Lab, established this year, focuses on last-mile unmanned delivery.

Huawei is considered a semi-company, as it has a layout combining communications and computing, and also collaborates with Changan Automobile and Tsinghua University.

Tencent counts as 0.3 companies. This year, it signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Shanghai International Automobile City to explore autonomous driving, and it has also invested in this field. It also has the goal of launching driverless electric vehicles before 2020.

Other companies, such as SAIC, claim that they will achieve Level 3 autonomous driving by 2020 and fully autonomous driving by 2025. Changan plans to invest 130 billion yuan in R&D and establish a 1500-person R&D team by 2025. Although the slogans are impressive, they are likely to be difficult to achieve.

As for emerging startups, Horizon Robotics focuses on hardware chips, RoboSense develops core sensors, and MagicVision concentrates on visual applications.

Baidu's assessment of this is that the domestic autonomous driving R&D field is characterized by Baidu leading the way, traditional automakers making moves, startups rising, and technology companies crossing over into the field.

But... there's something strange about Lingang.

Andrew Ng really enjoys the lively and enthusiastic atmosphere of these informal meetings, where everyone, including Li Yifan and others who have returned from Silicon Valley, as well as Wu Gansha and others who are in charge of this aspect of carbon silicon, are all pioneers in the entire ecosystem research and development field.

Although they belong to different companies, they do share a common goal of promoting the development of autonomous driving in Lingang, and there are not many competitive restrictions that would make people hesitate.

Andrew Ng chatted for an afternoon and was quite pleased with himself, but then scolded Yu Kai: "We've been in meetings for two days now, and you didn't tell me anything."

Yu Kai chuckled, offering no explanation, but simply asked with a smile, "How's it like working at Baidu?"

Andrew Ng glanced at his old friend who had brought him to Baidu but had left the company, and said only one sentence: "Thank you!"

Yu Kai laughed out loud and retorted, "It's already pretty good in China, unless you do it yourself like me."

Andrew Ng shook his head and suddenly asked, "Why haven't I seen President Yu?"

“Mr. Yu is busy with his own affairs and doesn’t know much about this field. Would you like him to come over and pour you tea?” Yu Kai said with a smile. “I should be able to see him tonight; we’ll all have dinner together.”

Andrew Ng did indeed meet with President Yu, who had not appeared during the day, in the evening and apologized in person: "President Yu, this is a closed-door meeting, and I came uninvited. I have indeed disturbed you."

"This is how they ended up sitting down to talk by chance. There was no closed-door meeting. Besides, closing doors won't work. We need everyone to collaborate and work together in an open-source way to have any hope of success," Yu Xing said with a slightly serious tone.

Andrew Ng praised, "President Yu, your strategy and planning are excellent, which is why we have such a meeting."

Yu Xing spread his hands: "That's too kind of me. I really didn't mean to have them talk about autonomous driving research and development. They insisted on discussing it, and I thought, okay, then I called Dr. Yu and notified DLF. Linggang Company is nearby, and in the end, the group of people started arguing noisily."

Andrew Ng laughed along, saying that the company has hardware, software, theory, cooperation, practice, and even vision. Hey, Lingang will soon be one of the few companies in China doing autonomous driving research and development.

(End of this chapter)