China’s business ‘ecosystems’ are helping it win the global A.I. race | Fortune

“China’s “Sputnik Moment” is what Kai-Fu Lee, author of the famous book AI Superpowers, likes to call it. Five years ago, when AlphaGo—an artificial intelligence–based program developed by DeepMind, a startup that Google acquired in 2014—defeated two of the world’s best human exponents of the board game Go, it came as an eye-opener to China and its A.I. community.

Soon after, the Chinese government launched an ambitious Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan to build China’s A.I. ecosystem, promising policy support, central coordination, and investments that are slated to cross the $150 billion mark by 2030. The goal: China’s A.I. industry should generate 1 trillion yuan ($160 billion) of annual revenues, with related industries crossing 10 trillion yuan ($1.6 trillion) in annual sales, by the end of this decade.”

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China’s AI unicorns aim to reduce reliance on government surveillance business | The Star

“When Chinese AI unicorns SenseTime, Megvii and Yitu were sanctioned by the US in October last year, it looked like a major threat to the survival of their business.

Yet the supply chain impact of being added to Washington’s Entity List, which restricted their access to American products, has been less significant than originally feared. In fact, it was quickly overshadowed by the need to diversify a business model overly reliant on government orders for surveillance cameras in a market that has since become saturated.”

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