Chapter 168： The future of Siri
Of course, since William Chen came to Silicon Valley, it is not just Zoom that needs attention.
If it is said that among all Silicon Valley companies, the one that William Chen cares about most is undoubtedly Siri. The key to intelligent speech is intelligence, so Siri has been conducting research on artificial intelligence.
At present, both Twitter and Siri have cooperated with the Siri company to build the Siri intelligent assistant in the APP to help users search and help. Especially after the update of the voice version, the built-in Siri robot has been able to conduct simple voice chats with users.
Of course, Chen William knows the future development prospects of intelligent voice, so these small achievements are far from meeting his requirements. This time William Chen came to Siri to accomplish two things.
First, Siri's intelligent voice assistant is actually a search in nature. Users ask Siri questions through text or voice, and then Siri retrieves network data and returns results to users through intelligent analysis.
For example, when a user asks what the weather will be like tomorrow, Siri will retrieve the relevant weather website, read the location of the mobile phone, get the information about the weather tomorrow where the user is located, and then give feedback.
Even chatting with users is the same. In a certain context, how should the user's words be answered, there will be many search results, and then combined with the context, Siri makes a choice and then answers. This is essentially the embodiment of search.
Of course, for different users, Siri is also improving the user's portrait, providing the most personalized answer for each user, including when the user asks about a nearby restaurant, in the user's portrait, his daily taste preference, price The acceptance range, etc., will be used as one of the factors for the selection of results.
This also involves the field of personalized recommendation algorithms. These technologies are all places that can cooperate with William Chen's other companies, including Twitter, Reddit, and even the "Observer" APP.
It would be a waste of money and resources if each company were to independently conduct research and development on these aspects. Therefore, William Chen will first invest 200 million US dollars this time to integrate the relevant departments and personnel of these companies to form an artificial intelligence Research Center, this research center will be relatively independent, but temporarily under the management of Siri Company, all research results will be provided to his companies for use.
Next, they will recruit talents in the field of artificial intelligence and start related research while the subprime mortgage crisis has also had a great impact on Silicon Valley.
The second thing is the acquisition of Nuance. The company currently has a monopoly on speech recognition, and Siri's speech recognition is a partnership with Nuance.
But after the subprime mortgage crisis hit the economy, Nuance's current market value has slipped below $1.5 billion. Now William Chen has two options, one is to acquire this company, and the other is to poach people through Siri, poach talents from the relevant departments of Nuance that they cooperate with, and form a speech recognition department of Siri.
The difficulty of acquiring Nuance is that although the company's market value is not high at present, many of the industry giants who cooperate with them are industry giants, including Samsung and Nintendo. It is rumored that Google has recently also intended to cooperate with this company. But William Chen knows that after just one or two years, Nuance's advantages in the field of speech recognition are no longer so obvious, because their relevant talents have been poached by major companies to study their own speech recognition technology.
This technology, although Nuance now has a monopoly position, but there is not much room for development. After reaching a certain accuracy, it is enough to meet the needs of use. If you want to improve it, the capital required will be compared with the effect of its application. It will increase exponentially, which is not cost-effective.
Therefore, within two years, various giants have developed their own speech recognition technology. Even if it is not as good as Nuance's, it is enough to use. This has also led to the emergence of this company in the face of With so many competitors, the market share is declining year by year.
So why did those giants not choose to buy Nuance, but poach people to develop their own? Then there is a cost-effective measure. At that time, after the subprime mortgage crisis of Nuance, coupled with more and more applications of speech recognition, the market value has reached more than 5 billion US dollars. Compared with its own research and development, it paid such a large price to acquire it. , they chose the latter.
However, the market value of Nuance is not too high now. If it is acquired, it will be more cost-effective and time-saving to take some precautions against the poaching of other giants.
As for digging people to develop their own research and development, the cost is definitely less, but the key is that it takes time. William Chen doesn't want Siri to make it by himself, and then he finds that other giants have also entered this field.
In particular, the search giant Google should be extra careful.
At present, William Chen's strategy is to first discuss the acquisition with Nuance. If the company can be acquired as a whole, then it is best. Otherwise, take advantage of the current low stock price to absorb the company's stock in the secondary market, and at the same time through the Goldman Sachs contacted the shareholders of the other party, bought what they could, and became a shareholder of Nuance first.
The next step is to dig people, get their own useful technology, and then combine it with Siri's technology. The purpose is to keep Siri in the lead in the field of intelligent voice.
In addition to Siri, William Chen is also very concerned.
At present, the functions of voice intercom and voice call have been launched, and the function of video call is currently planned to be launched in the next version.
In addition, Chen William is also preparing to let David Jones add the function of the circle of friends.
In the previous life, the same p had only the chat function and not so many other functions, which also limited the development of p.
The reason is that p had been acquired by Facebook at that time, and Facebook had other projects, so it was unwilling to let its various APPs compete with each other, and each APP would have limited functions.
Just like p, if the function of the circle of friends is added like the WeChat of Huaguo, then there will be a conflict with the positioning of Facebook itself, which is equivalent to the competitiveness of the subsidiary company with the parent company, which will certainly not be a small what za would like to see.
The same goes for other functions, which is one of the reasons why p's functions are so simple compared to WeChat.
Now William Chen has no such concerns at all, and can completely increase the function of the circle of friends. This belongs to social sharing among acquaintances. Coupled with the connection with Twitter, Twitter belongs to strangers' social interaction. It is two fields with the circle of friends. There is competition, but it can be well combined.
Soon it was New Year's Day, and the time officially entered 2010.
Unsurprisingly, Chen William saw the New Year's Day event on the Future Bank's activity interface, and it was another lottery draw.
It's just that the result of the lottery this time made him a little disappointed. Liuwei Dihuang Wan, what's wrong with me is this, are things going to develop in a strange direction? Now it's all... hey, it's not suitable to expand on it.
Now that he came to California, William Chen made a trip to Los Angeles by the way. Rick Walton had previously invested $30 million in MGM to ensure that the struggling film company could make $3.5 billion. Under the debt, stick to this year.
The ideal is very good, but then MGM encountered the subprime mortgage crisis Their creditors are all very difficult in this situation.
Before MGM, two companies, Universal and Lionsgate, made offers. Universal was a cash acquisition, but the $1.5 billion offer at that time made creditors a little dissatisfied, thinking that it was far below their expectations.
Although Lionsgate's offer is slightly higher, but it is prepared to acquire through share exchange, this method will not help MGM's current predicament.
Those creditors are not stupid. If you buy stocks with stocks, the debts will still exist in the end, and it is even possible that these debts will accumulate more and more, and there is no possibility of development for the better.
But that was then, and now when the economic crisis hits, the creditors are even more miserable. Even if they want to accept Universal's $1.5 billion offer now, the other party will not continue because they must first ensure that they survive the crisis. Just do it.
Therefore, under such circumstances, Goldman Sachs representative William Chen was welcomed by creditors as soon as he contacted MGM. William Chen, he has been making a lot of acquisitions recently, and he has ample funds. If he can take over MGM, it is very likely that their debts can be recovered, which is better than letting MGM go bankrupt and reorganize.
When the day of bankruptcy and reorganization comes, how much debt they can get back is really uncertain.
American Road to Fame https://
If it is said that among all Silicon Valley companies, the one that William Chen cares about most is undoubtedly Siri. The key to intelligent speech is intelligence, so Siri has been conducting research on artificial intelligence.
At present, both Twitter and Siri have cooperated with the Siri company to build the Siri intelligent assistant in the APP to help users search and help. Especially after the update of the voice version, the built-in Siri robot has been able to conduct simple voice chats with users.
Of course, Chen William knows the future development prospects of intelligent voice, so these small achievements are far from meeting his requirements. This time William Chen came to Siri to accomplish two things.
First, Siri's intelligent voice assistant is actually a search in nature. Users ask Siri questions through text or voice, and then Siri retrieves network data and returns results to users through intelligent analysis.
For example, when a user asks what the weather will be like tomorrow, Siri will retrieve the relevant weather website, read the location of the mobile phone, get the information about the weather tomorrow where the user is located, and then give feedback.
Even chatting with users is the same. In a certain context, how should the user's words be answered, there will be many search results, and then combined with the context, Siri makes a choice and then answers. This is essentially the embodiment of search.
Of course, for different users, Siri is also improving the user's portrait, providing the most personalized answer for each user, including when the user asks about a nearby restaurant, in the user's portrait, his daily taste preference, price The acceptance range, etc., will be used as one of the factors for the selection of results.
This also involves the field of personalized recommendation algorithms. These technologies are all places that can cooperate with William Chen's other companies, including Twitter, Reddit, and even the "Observer" APP.
It would be a waste of money and resources if each company were to independently conduct research and development on these aspects. Therefore, William Chen will first invest 200 million US dollars this time to integrate the relevant departments and personnel of these companies to form an artificial intelligence Research Center, this research center will be relatively independent, but temporarily under the management of Siri Company, all research results will be provided to his companies for use.
Next, they will recruit talents in the field of artificial intelligence and start related research while the subprime mortgage crisis has also had a great impact on Silicon Valley.
The second thing is the acquisition of Nuance. The company currently has a monopoly on speech recognition, and Siri's speech recognition is a partnership with Nuance.
But after the subprime mortgage crisis hit the economy, Nuance's current market value has slipped below $1.5 billion. Now William Chen has two options, one is to acquire this company, and the other is to poach people through Siri, poach talents from the relevant departments of Nuance that they cooperate with, and form a speech recognition department of Siri.
The difficulty of acquiring Nuance is that although the company's market value is not high at present, many of the industry giants who cooperate with them are industry giants, including Samsung and Nintendo. It is rumored that Google has recently also intended to cooperate with this company. But William Chen knows that after just one or two years, Nuance's advantages in the field of speech recognition are no longer so obvious, because their relevant talents have been poached by major companies to study their own speech recognition technology.
This technology, although Nuance now has a monopoly position, but there is not much room for development. After reaching a certain accuracy, it is enough to meet the needs of use. If you want to improve it, the capital required will be compared with the effect of its application. It will increase exponentially, which is not cost-effective.
Therefore, within two years, various giants have developed their own speech recognition technology. Even if it is not as good as Nuance's, it is enough to use. This has also led to the emergence of this company in the face of With so many competitors, the market share is declining year by year.
So why did those giants not choose to buy Nuance, but poach people to develop their own? Then there is a cost-effective measure. At that time, after the subprime mortgage crisis of Nuance, coupled with more and more applications of speech recognition, the market value has reached more than 5 billion US dollars. Compared with its own research and development, it paid such a large price to acquire it. , they chose the latter.
However, the market value of Nuance is not too high now. If it is acquired, it will be more cost-effective and time-saving to take some precautions against the poaching of other giants.
As for digging people to develop their own research and development, the cost is definitely less, but the key is that it takes time. William Chen doesn't want Siri to make it by himself, and then he finds that other giants have also entered this field.
In particular, the search giant Google should be extra careful.
At present, William Chen's strategy is to first discuss the acquisition with Nuance. If the company can be acquired as a whole, then it is best. Otherwise, take advantage of the current low stock price to absorb the company's stock in the secondary market, and at the same time through the Goldman Sachs contacted the shareholders of the other party, bought what they could, and became a shareholder of Nuance first.
The next step is to dig people, get their own useful technology, and then combine it with Siri's technology. The purpose is to keep Siri in the lead in the field of intelligent voice.
In addition to Siri, William Chen is also very concerned.
At present, the functions of voice intercom and voice call have been launched, and the function of video call is currently planned to be launched in the next version.
In addition, Chen William is also preparing to let David Jones add the function of the circle of friends.
In the previous life, the same p had only the chat function and not so many other functions, which also limited the development of p.
The reason is that p had been acquired by Facebook at that time, and Facebook had other projects, so it was unwilling to let its various APPs compete with each other, and each APP would have limited functions.
Just like p, if the function of the circle of friends is added like the WeChat of Huaguo, then there will be a conflict with the positioning of Facebook itself, which is equivalent to the competitiveness of the subsidiary company with the parent company, which will certainly not be a small what za would like to see.
The same goes for other functions, which is one of the reasons why p's functions are so simple compared to WeChat.
Now William Chen has no such concerns at all, and can completely increase the function of the circle of friends. This belongs to social sharing among acquaintances. Coupled with the connection with Twitter, Twitter belongs to strangers' social interaction. It is two fields with the circle of friends. There is competition, but it can be well combined.
Soon it was New Year's Day, and the time officially entered 2010.
Unsurprisingly, Chen William saw the New Year's Day event on the Future Bank's activity interface, and it was another lottery draw.
It's just that the result of the lottery this time made him a little disappointed. Liuwei Dihuang Wan, what's wrong with me is this, are things going to develop in a strange direction? Now it's all... hey, it's not suitable to expand on it.
Now that he came to California, William Chen made a trip to Los Angeles by the way. Rick Walton had previously invested $30 million in MGM to ensure that the struggling film company could make $3.5 billion. Under the debt, stick to this year.
The ideal is very good, but then MGM encountered the subprime mortgage crisis Their creditors are all very difficult in this situation.
Before MGM, two companies, Universal and Lionsgate, made offers. Universal was a cash acquisition, but the $1.5 billion offer at that time made creditors a little dissatisfied, thinking that it was far below their expectations.
Although Lionsgate's offer is slightly higher, but it is prepared to acquire through share exchange, this method will not help MGM's current predicament.
Those creditors are not stupid. If you buy stocks with stocks, the debts will still exist in the end, and it is even possible that these debts will accumulate more and more, and there is no possibility of development for the better.
But that was then, and now when the economic crisis hits, the creditors are even more miserable. Even if they want to accept Universal's $1.5 billion offer now, the other party will not continue because they must first ensure that they survive the crisis. Just do it.
Therefore, under such circumstances, Goldman Sachs representative William Chen was welcomed by creditors as soon as he contacted MGM. William Chen, he has been making a lot of acquisitions recently, and he has ample funds. If he can take over MGM, it is very likely that their debts can be recovered, which is better than letting MGM go bankrupt and reorganize.
When the day of bankruptcy and reorganization comes, how much debt they can get back is really uncertain.
American Road to Fame https://
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