Competition brings world elites to key conference

Team members discuss their entry project at the Shanghai leg of the World Internet Competition in mid-August. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

As part of efforts to promote global internet cooperative innovation and stimulate entrepreneurial vitality, this year's World Internet Conference added a new facet — the Global Internet Competition of "Straight to Wuzhen".

"Through the competition, we hope to attract global internet elites to Wuzhen and explore new technologies, models and formats of the internet, and provide an important platform to promote cooperation in internet projects, technologies and professionals," said Wu Junqing, deputy head of the Department of Economy and Information Technology of Zhejiang.

After the preliminary round of the competition held in China and overseas, as well as online, the final will be held during the sixth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province on Oct 22.

The competition's preliminary round started in Hong Kong on April 15, which attracted around 30 startup teams, focusing on artificial intelligence, medicine, blockchain, intelligent hardware, virtual reality and other sectors. A total of 10 teams were selected to showcase their projects and graded by five experts from well-known venture capital institutions and entrepreneurship parks.

One of the competitors, VoiceAI Technologies combined the advanced AI and voice print recognition technology to solve the insecurity of the remote identity verification. The company has participated in several nation-level projects and served more than 10 million users.

VoiceAI Technologies' voice print recognition project, WildFaces.ai's AIbased video analytics technologies and Orca Tech's unmanned ship won the tickets to the semifinal.

The Beijing leg was held on July 27 and attracted more than 100 startup teams covering AI, big data and internet of things sectors, and 10 of them were selected to present their projects.

Mao Song, investment director of Qualcomm Ventures, Yu Xiaoyi, head of investment of JD AI, Yu Yue, vice-president of investment of iFlytek Startups and other investment experts served as judges.

LuxCreo Technology, United AI and Tranzvision Consulting gained the highest scores. 

Zhu Weiqiang, a standing member of the Tongxiang committee of the Communist Party of China, said that as the host city of the World Internet Conference, Tongxiang, with an entrepreneurial and innovation-friendly environment and preferential policies, hopes to attract quality high-tech teams to start their businesses in the city.

In addition, the Chengdu and Shanghai legs were held on Aug 8 and 15, respectively. The last stop in China was held in Shenzhen on Aug 23. 

Shenzhen Intellifusion Technology, an AI research and development startup company, won the first place among more than 100 competitors.

According to Mo Lei, director of strategic planning of the company, Intellifusion has a leading foundation team and built an international and industrialized team to create an AI city service system through the algorithm, chip and big data technology.

The company, founded in 2014, has applied its AI products and solutions in 100 cities and regions, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu in Sichuan province and Qingdao in Shandong province, as well as some cities in Southeast Asia.

The online competition kicked off in August and attracted around 400 teams from across the world. Many of the candidate projects have each drawn investment worth more than 100 million yuan ($14.16 million). They are from various fields and of high quality, according to officials at the Department of Economy and Information Technology of Zhejiang.