China speech valley is the last word in AI development

The tech hub is providing wide-ranging assistance to help young companies achieve their potential

In the China AI Development Report for 2020 and the AI Open Index, 10 cities were listed among the world's top 100 cities by artificial intelligence innovation power.

Hefei, capital of Anhui province, ranked fourth among all the Chinese cities listed and third among those on the Chinese mainland.

Since 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Anhui Provincial Government have been developing China Speech Valley, a high-tech industrial park, into a major hub for the AI industry.

In the facility, located in the Hefei National High-tech Industry Development Zone, the human voice is bearing new technological fruit for use in daily life.

The products range from robots used for a range of purposes to computer mice with convenient speech input functions－for Mandarin, English and even some Chinese dialects－to various wearable smart devices.

In addition, more than 1,000 companies are working in the facility, aiming to grab a slice of the country's huge AI development market.

Among them, publicly-traded iFlytek reported operating revenue of more than 13 billion yuan ($2 billion) last year, with net income of 1.36 billion yuan, according to its annual report.

So far, iFlytek's open-access platform has served millions of entrepreneurs and third-party developers who use its AI and speech-recognition technologies to conduct business, it said.

It is also a big creator that can spur on smaller outfits.

With the support of iFlytek's platform, MiMouse, a technology startup in speech-recognition technologies, settled in China Speech Valley six years ago. The company has turned creative ideas into commercial products, such as its smart mouse.

Other companies headquartered in the zone include Huami Corp, a United States-listed maker of smart wearables.

Qi Dongfeng, CEO of China Speech Valley, said the facility has made great efforts to help its clients, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, build up business in the AI field.

Among them, 17 have annual operating revenue of more than 1 billion yuan, according to Qi's management team.

Official assistance

In 2017, the Anhui government issued a blueprint to build the valley with a 5 billion yuan investment, aiming to foster a world-class industrial AI cluster with international competitiveness.

To further optimize the business environment and better serve high-tech companies, the city government introduced a range of measures to simplify administrative procedures.

In the Government Service Center of the Hefei High-tech Zone, the time needed to start a company has been reduced to one day or even less, and it only takes three to four days to obtain a business license, compared with at least one month previously.

Qi said entrepreneurs can receive help with many issues such as low-cost office rentals, recruitment of college graduates, support from AI experts, expanding market share and obtaining bank loans.

"We should not just chant meaningless slogans, but do real favors for entrepreneurs," he said.

According to the provincial government's plan, it can provide China Speech Valley with 800 million yuan a year to improve its industry chain, help entrepreneurs reduce office rental costs and increase investment in research and market expansion.

With a population of 9.37 million, about one-third that of Beijing, Hefei is being built into a "municipality of innovation", according to the city government's plan.

Mao Yuanyuan, vice-president of China Speech Valley, said,"The University of Science and Technology of China and some institutes with the Chinese Academy of Sciences based in Hefei have made fruitful achievements thanks to our creativity."

For example, Infervision, a company that develops medical-related AI technology in the hub, has created an auxiliary diagnostic system and equipped dozens of hospitals nationwide with it to aid the fight against COVID-19.