Taibo, the largest third-party car networking company in China, won hundreds of millions of strategic investments from Dongfeng Group and Xiaomi Group at the end of March and mid-April, which caused great ripples in the rivers and lakes of car networking.
Although these two investment cases are very heavy, the investment details and stories behind them are little known. Xiaomi Group, in particular, has previously invested 400 million US dollars in Xpeng Motors, one of the three major new car manufacturers. What big game is playing this time to overweight the largest third-party car networking company in China? And what kind of blueprint will Taber and Xiaomi plan after joining hands?
A few days ago, Che Dongxi interviewed Ying Yilun, founder and chairman of Taibo Group, and found the answers to these questions.
First, Xiaomi 400 million Jiatibo Wang Chuan once led a team to learn from car companies.
/kloc-in April, 2007, Taber announced that it had won the strategic investment of Xiaomi Group B, and said that it would cooperate with Xiaomi in software, hardware and voice multi-scene interaction. This round of investment is only more than half a month from Taber's strategic investment in Dongfeng Group.
Ying Yilun told Che Dongxi that Taber's valuation in these two financing was in the scale of 400 billion yuan, of which Xiaomi contributed 400 million yuan, accounting for more than 9% of the shares, and won the board seat, while Dongfeng contributed 200 million yuan, accounting for less than 8% of the shares.
"The main investors of Xiaomi and Dongfeng are not the capital companies under the two giants, but the group direct investment (non-capital sector investment), which shows that the level of these two investments is very high." Ying Yilun said to the car.
At present, the competition among major car companies is becoming increasingly fierce, and the company background is often considered when selecting car networking suppliers. In the view of the car, Dongfeng did not enter the board of directors of Taber, but only retained Taber's attribute as an "independent third-party car networking" company, which is conducive to its acquisition of more car enterprise customers.
It should be said that the fate with Xiaomi stems from the mobile car networking product-Qing Mobile Portable Car Networking.
Back in the summer of 2065438+2009, the joint research and development scheme of Qingdao Mobile Portable Vehicle Network was released at a press conference of SAIC-GM-Wuling (hereinafter referred to as Wuling).
▲ Taber and SAIC-GM-Wuling jointly released the engine mobile portable vehicle networking.
This is an advanced mobile phone mapping project similar to Apple Carplay and Baidu Carlife, which can project all the applications on the mobile phone to the car screen and support voice interaction.
In this way, the car owner can use all the mobile apps on the big screen of the car, so as to get richer functions (such as navigation and music). At the same time, thanks to the powerful computing power of mobile phones, the running speed of cars has also been greatly improved.
In addition, many people will change their mobile phones in 1~2 years. This scheme can also make the car machine use the latest computing power and mobile traffic at any time, which solves the problem that the previous car machine hardware lags behind in a few years, and also helps car companies save about 800~ 1600 yuan's chip and other hardware costs on each car.
"Many users will choose the unlimited traffic package after getting the 5G mobile phone, but it is difficult for car companies to provide 5G unlimited traffic services to car machines. The networking of mobile cars is very suitable for low-priced models. " Ying Yilun explained, "It takes only 2 hours for car users and 24 hours for mobile phones, so there is a lot of imagination for the future use scenarios of mobile smart space and mobile travel services."
▲ Qing mobile portable car networking is a more advanced screen projection scheme.
Taber's ultimate plan is to connect all mobile phones and applications to the car perfectly.
This product and future imagination naturally attracted the attention of mobile phone giants.
Wang Chuan, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Xiaomi, went to liuzhou wuling headquarters to communicate with Taber team in 2065438+0916543810. The interest of both sides is increasing day by day, and the Wuling senior management team also paid a return visit to Beijing Xiaomi headquarters.
"In the tripartite communication, Wang Chuan and I exchanged a lot of product ideas and ideas about the Internet of Vehicles. Taber is very much looking forward to more in-depth cooperation with Xiaomi in this era of IOT devices such as mobile phones, cars, speakers and TVs. " For the story behind Xiaomi's investment in Taber, Ying Yilun said, "And Xiaomi itself also hopes to make a layout on the Internet of Vehicles, and finally decided to invest in Taber in a few months." .
Second, the deep penetration of automobiles and smart devices will explore supply chain cooperation.
Xiaomi and Taber originated from the networking of mobile phones and cars, so what kind of chess game are they planning after completing their investment?
The most direct is the aforementioned mobile phone car networking scheme. By cooperating with mobile phone manufacturers like Xiaomi, Xiaomi's mobile phone can better match Taber's mobile car networking solution-not only can it increase the selling point of mobile phones, but also expand the user base of Xiaomi's Internet service, thus increasing Xiaomi's overall presence in the field of car networking.
However, the above is only the first step. The most important cooperation between the two parties is actually in the aspect of automobile +IOT.
In 2020, Xiaomi upgraded the previous mobile phone +IOT two-wheel drive strategy to 5G+AIOT strategy, further strengthening the importance of IOT Internet of Everything business. The official data released by Xiaomi is that even if the mobile phone and computer are removed, 235 million devices have been connected.
Bracelets, watches, smart speakers, smart plugs-Xiaomi has a variety of IOT devices, but it does not include cars.
Cars are so important. For example, when investing in Tabor, Lei Jun commented that "cars are an important part of future technology, and cars are also the most important intelligent terminals in people's lives in the future."
For Xiaomi, who has sold hundreds of millions of mobile phones and connected 235 million devices, he certainly wants to connect to the car.
"After the popularity of 5G, applications will disappear greatly, and various services and contents will be called by voice. At this time, if a car wants to connect various IOT devices such as mobile phones, bracelets, watches and smart speakers, it must cooperate with equipment vendors and integrate at the bottom. " Ying Yilun explained, "Only in this way can I talk to the car, make the speaker at home understand, or talk to the mobile phone, and I can control the car."
Ying Yilun gave an interesting example. For example, when a user drives out to travel and sees the scenery is good, he gives an order through voice to let the front camera of the car take pictures, and then directly transmits them to the Xiaomi TV screen of his parents' home. On the other hand, parents at home can also say a word to the TV and have a video call with the child who is driving.
"What Taber has to do is to connect different devices, that is, 1 car+1 mobile phone+an N, where N is all other devices." Ying Yilun said.
Xiaomi has massive devices that want to connect cars, and the massive cars behind Taber want to connect other devices-this complementarity naturally brings the two companies together.
"This is only the first step in these two years, and there is still more room for imagination in the follow-up." Talking about the possibility of cooperation between Taber and Xiaomi, we should mention more according to Lun.
For example, he said that Xiaomi's dozens of inches of big TV only sells for two or three thousand yuan, but the cost of a small screen in the car has reached more than one thousand yuan. Can Taber reduce the cost of cars through Xiaomi's strong supply chain capability?
In addition, Xiao Ai, Xiaomi's voice assistant, can also be put in Taber's in-vehicle system, and even MIUI of Xiaomi may get on the bus directly.
3. Taibo has received an order of 654.38+07 billion yuan to land in science and technology innovation board next year.
The cold winter of 20 19 just ended, and the black swan epidemic appeared in early 2020, which hit the global automobile market hard. As a member of the automobile industry chain, Taibo has successively obtained financing from Dongfeng and Xiaomi at this special moment. Why?
In Ying Yilun's view, this depends on Taber's product innovation ability and rapid growth ability.
According to its introduction, in terms of products, Taber took the lead in realizing pre-installation and mass production of Android cars in China, taking the lead in realizing 3G connection, taking the lead in introducing natural semantic understanding, and taking the lead in realizing dynamic navigation to avoid congestion. It is a well-deserved leader in the field of car networking.
At present, dozens of car companies, such as North and South Volkswagen, FAW Audi, Lamborghini, Jaguar Land Rover, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Dongfeng Shen Feng, Geely, Great Wall, BAIC and Baowo, are using Taber's in-vehicle system or related services.
▲ The on-board system of Dongfeng Shen Feng was developed by Taber.
Among them, SAIC-GM-Wuling previously chose the zebra network system, but within one year, it and Tabor released the Mobile car networking engine Mobile. Geely, which owns the car networking company Yi Cartoon, still carries Tabor's system on some entry-level models (Yi Cartoon mainly serves high-end models).
One of the most concerned models of independent brands in 2020, the car system called domestic Rolls-Royce Red Flag H9, is also made by Taber.
Taber, which is constantly favored by car companies, has a rapid growth in revenue scale.
"Since its establishment, Taber's income has basically doubled every year. More than 6 billion in 20 18 years, 20 1 19 years, and the target for this year is about 2.5 billion. " Ying Yilun said confidently, "The target of 202 1 is about 7 billion."
This goal is not without foundation.
At the first partner conference held in 20 19, Taber announced that the order amount had reached1700 million yuan.
According to Ying Yi's introduction, this 654.38+07 billion yuan is a five-year agreement signed with a number of car companies. In five years, Taibo will provide in-vehicle systems (including software and hardware) and other services (such as cloud service and user operation) for Wuling, Dongfeng, Great Wall, Geely and Hongqi, involving millions of models, each of which will earn hundreds to thousands of dollars, and eventually form 650.
"Income has increased. At the end of next year, we are going to land on the science and technology innovation board. " Ying Yilun said.
In terms of in-depth cooperation with car companies, Taber is quite similar to Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd.-it is also a mode of frequently establishing joint ventures with car companies and then supplying them. Its joint venture with BAIC New Energy has landed, and a car networking research and development center has been established with Dongfeng in Nanjing, and several other joint venture projects are also in progress.
Although it seems smooth sailing, the challenge of a giant is approaching.
From 20 19, the pace of getting on the bus by giants such as BAT and Huawei has gradually accelerated, and BAT's vehicle system has also landed on vehicles of many brands. In the context of the giants accelerating their boarding, how does Taber maintain its position as the number one in the industry?
"A group of people play much better than themselves." Ying Yilun said, "For large enterprises, cooperation may gain more benefits than killing opponents."
In Ying Yilun's view, the entry of BAT and Huawei is actually a good thing, indicating that Taber's direction is right. He repeatedly stressed that Taber is a very open enterprise, and actually has various cooperation with BAT and Huawei. Let's make this big together.
However, competition is inevitable after all. In this regard, Ying Yilun believes that the most essential thing is to keep the technology, experience and cost of their products leading, and behind this is team building, ecological deployment and continuous R&D investment, which is a systematic project.
▲ Taibo Company Office
"25% of Taber's annual revenue is invested in R&D, and since 1 1 year, the accumulated R&D investment has reached more than one billion yuan, with more than 4,000 knowledge products", Ying Yilun concluded. "Relying on these investments, Taber has successively established a series of products including engine core, engine OS, engine map, engine ai and engine cloud, which is unique in the industry.
Conclusion: The Internet of Vehicles is developing in depth.
In the past 10 years, the core of the car networking has been around the system, and the main job of each family is to install a useful system and function for the car, so that it can realize various services through networking.
However, after entering the third year of 2 1 century, 5G communication technology is about to break out in an all-round way. The characteristics of high speed, large bandwidth and low latency will completely reshape the way the operating system is used-most applications will become cloud programs, and at the same time, they will be integrated into portals such as voice interaction.
At the same time, 5G will further promote the realization of the Internet of Everything. Cars are bound to be deeply interconnected with mobile phones, televisions, smart speakers, bracelets, watches and other devices. This requires closer cooperation between car companies, car networking companies and various equipment manufacturers to realize the vision of transmitting the pictures taken by the front camera of the car to the big screen of the home TV with the movement of the mouth.
From this point of view, Taber chose the right track and the right partner, and was one step ahead again.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.