AI industry set to boom in Hefei tech zone

China Speech Valley boasts more than 630 AI enterprises, and has incubated and cultivated about 130 AI products in the fields of education, medical care and automobiles. [Photo by Huang Bohan/Xinhua]

China Speech Valley, located in the Hefei National High-tech Industry Development Zone, was positioned as the only national artificial intelligence (AI) industrial base.

Through seven years of development, China Speech Valley is now home to more than 630 AI enterprises. In 2018, the zone generated an output value of 65 billion yuan ($9.3 billion), a year-on-year growth of 102 percent, and in 2019, its total revenue reached 80 billion yuan, up 23 percent year-on-year.

The valley is accelerating its push for high-quality development, aiming to foster an AI industrial cluster with international influence. It is expected that several leading AI enterprises will be cultivated by the end of this year, and the industrial scale of AI industries will exceed 100 billion yuan.

According to a cooperation agreement signed between the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Anhui provincial government in 2018, both sides agreed to develop the valley into a highland for the nation’s intelligent voice industry within five years.

Relying on the nation’s leading enterprises and academic institutions such as the University of Science and Technology of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and iFlytek, the valley has developed a characteristic industrial layout centering on internet plus, intelligent terminals, smart city and mobile health, aiming to set up a 100-billion-yuan industrial park with a complete industrial chain.

In 2018, the park gathered more than 3,800 incubation centers for the AI industry, and several high-quality AI projects have settled in the valley, including Hikvision, Sinovation Ventures, Ultrapower and the China National Engineering Laboratory.

Supported by key colleges and universities, research institutions and enterprises, the valley has beefed up its efforts to promote innovative development by increasing research and development (R&D) investment, contributing to the rapid accumulation of cutting-edge technologies.

In 2018, it fostered one national innovation platform and three provincial ones, and was granted 105 invention patents. R&D expenditure totaled 2.7 billion yuan, accounting for 4.1 percent of the valley’s main business income.

According to a report released by CCID Consulting in 2018, Hefei ranked third among all the cities in China in AI research, and iFlytek took an international leading position in fields such as speech synthesis, speech recognition and smart oral evaluation.

The Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of CAS led the country in technologies like intelligent sensors and detection, natural human-computer interaction and intelligent decision-making.

AI industries in Hefei high-tech zone have ushered in a new era, and the zone is now a gathering place for world-leading AI and intelligent voice technologies. In the future, it is expected to grow into a powerful driving force to propel the city’s industrial transformation and upgrading, as well as economic transition and development.