Editor's note:
On the shores of the East China Sea and the Pujiang River, generations of Pudong science and technology pioneers have made outstanding contributions to China's science and technology industry. They are either industry leaders or leaders in niche areas, and they all take it as their mission to innovate to serve society and promote economic development. Their story is the epitome of China’s scientific and technological innovation. In order to promote the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship, Zhang Tong News and the Pudong New Area R&D Institutions Association jointly launched the "Pudong Entrepreneurs" column, which interviews innovative entrepreneurs from integrated circuits, biomedicine, new generation information technology and other high-tech fields to tell their stories. Innovative stories promote the outstanding style of the pioneers of the era.
In a random Baidu search for "Tao Chuang", about 794,000 results were displayed on the screen, and the number one ranking was his encyclopedia entry: Tao Chuang - Internet IT cross-border figure .
He was the youngest tenured professor at the University of Calgary, the "Father of Microsoft Earth", and a consultant to the United Nations...
He founded Geo Tango and became the first Chinese company to be acquired by Bill Gates.
He founded PPTV and got Masayoshi Son to directly invest US$250 million in seven minutes.
He founded Zhizhuo Capital and "invested in crazy projects" with Musk.
He founded Weizhi Technology to build the core engine of urban digital twins.
At the same time, he is also a big V who exports knowledge and has 3.92 million fans on Weibo.
His story has been retold, analysed, chewed and argued over and over again, but in the end it is just a foggy view. The so-called "your various annotations and interpretations of me do not constitute one ten thousandth of me, but they are all visible at a glance" You." A character who has been reported many times often has standard answers to many questions and certain details in many stories.
However, how did Tao Chuang become himself? How did you create Weizhi Technology? Why did he choose to take root in Zhangjiang after traveling all over the world? Having created legends time and time again, what kind of smart technology will he create?
With questions, we interviewed Tao Chuang, the founder of Weizhi Technology via video link. At that time, he was quarantining at home, making a pot of tea and enjoying a rare vacation.
▲Tao Chuang, founder of Weizhi Technology
01First meeting
The background of Tao Chuang's meeting is a dark blue dotted picture, like connected planets. This picture also often appears in reports related to him. He took the initiative to mention this detail,
"This is a three-dimensional map, with a convenience store in the center. This map is like a neuron network. Each node is the physical world that we use artificial intelligence to express. We use algorithms to do AI reasoning and remove one neuron. Does it have any impact on this place? Then provide suggestions for people’s decision-making.”
Store operations and site selection are one of the important implementation scenarios of Weizhi Technology products. Weizhi Technology is his fourth entrepreneurial venture , and his story is the adventure of a genius stepping out of the ivory tower and coming to the human world.
The map is extremely broad and extremely detailed, clarifying the boundaries and constantly breaking them. For high-precision maps adapted to autonomous driving, the accuracy needs to be controlled at the 10cm level. Tao Chuang, who has studied geographical positioning for 36 years, will also take the initiative to position himself at the beginning of the interview and gain the narrative initiative.
He explains his character anchors and storyline.
"My name has the word 'chuang' in it, and my character and experience always seem to be associated with 'chuang'."
He could talk nonstop about a very small question for twenty minutes, and then stop to examine himself, "I used to be a teacher, and you know, teachers just like to talk." Then he used a joke to resolve the visitor's initial Regarding the possible uneasiness of meeting, "It is rare for me to have the opportunity to tell my story for two or three hours. If you are willing to listen, my wife might find me annoying after listening for 10 minutes." In fact, his schedule is very tight, and this interview also took two appointments. We made an appointment next time.
His humble demeanor stems from his "people are like frogs in a well" philosophy and his battles with top players.
02 Go to the top of the ivory tower
Someone asked on Zhihu, "Are there any legendary figures related to the surveying and mapping profession?" The number one answer was Tao Chuang.
"Only Chu has talent, and this is where it flourishes." Tao Chuang entered Wuhan University of Surveying and Mapping Technology (now Wuhan University) in 1986 to study geographic information and remote sensing. After obtaining a master's degree in 1993, he stayed at the school to teach. At that time, he was the youngest independent winner of the National Natural Science Foundation of China in the school . In 1995, he went to Canada to study for a doctorate at the University of Calgary. In two and a half years, he became the fastest person to obtain a doctorate at the school. In 1998, Tao Chenggong joined the University of Calgary in Canada to teach. He became a tenured professor at the age of 32 and became the Canadian National Chief Research Professor at the age of 33 , which is the highest title in Canadian academic circles. At the same time, he has published more than 200 technical papers and holds multiple technical patents. “When I first arrived abroad, I really didn’t know how many all-nighters I stayed up during my Ph.D. program in order to catch up with others.”
Tao Chuang demonstrates VR equipment during teaching
He attributes his achievements to hard work, but in fact it also depends on his efficient management capabilities. In order to improve the efficiency of scientific research management, he studied a book on organizational management. American sociologist PM Blau and others divide social organizations into mutually beneficial organizations, private profit-making organizations, service organizations, and public welfare organizations. As a public welfare organization, the scale of a school is limited by its functions, while commercial organizations can be very large. As he continued to achieve technological achievements, he discovered that many technologies were buried in laboratories and did not change society. He hoped that scientific research results could truly benefit society—the most direct path is business.
After breaking out of the country, he broke out of the laboratory and came into the crowd.
03From university professor to entrepreneur
In 2002, Tao Chuang founded Geo Tango in Toronto, Canada . Geo Tango developed the industry's earliest commercial networked 3D map system, Globe View, nearly three years before Google Earth.
After starting a business, he discovered that technology is not the only indicator in a business organization. How to sell products is a big question. So he started taking classes to learn marketing. "Every morning when I go to lectures, I don't want others to know that I am a university professor. I just sit in the back corner of the classroom." After listening to the lectures, he was enlightened and realized that there is so much knowledge in sales. By constantly updating his knowledge structure, he led Geo Tango to sell the system to 18 countries and regions around the world within two years. At this time he received an invitation from Bill Gates.
He always remembers the first time he went to Seattle to meet Bill Gates 17 years ago to discuss the acquisition of Geo Tango.
The night before, he did a thick SWOT analysis, and before that, there were several companies he rejected and a month-long negotiation stalemate. But what Bill Gates said made him fascinated:
“I respect you and your background。”
Tao Chuang felt "my head was dizzy. I couldn't remember anything Bill Gates said in the next 30 minutes." On the plane back to Toronto from Seattle, he was thinking about how to work for Bill Gates. Now that he thought about it, he joked, "This is just a trick of a great person, right? He may not even know who I am. I have learned now, and when we first meet, I say I'm glad we finally met."
Geo Tango became the first company founded by a Chinese in the history of Microsoft's mergers and acquisitions. Tao Chuang became the head of Microsoft's Virtual Earth Department, allowing Microsoft's Virtual Earth products to capture nearly 70% of the global enterprise market (B2B) and become Microsoft's online service One of the most competitive flagship brands in the country. The gathering of Microsoft's top talents made him feel that "he was a frog in a well." Before each report, he would stay up all night with his team to prepare materials and rehearse details. "Bill Gates gives me the impression that he is high-dimensional and low-dimensional. He won't explain too much in one sentence. We report together as a team, and after the report we have to sit down and analyze together. When you are in contact with world-class experts, you must You need to understand his opinions. I especially like to deal with experts, and I will improve in the process of understanding."
Later, he spent 7 minutes reporting on the reason why he won Son Zhengyi’s $250 million investment. This was also the same rigorous training. Meeting Son was the day before Christmas, 10 minutes per company. "The company in front of me was delayed, and I only had 7 minutes." Tao Chuang recalled. He was wearing a suit and Son was casual in a cardigan. Tao Chuang said three paragraphs to Sun Zhengyi, each of which he thought over and over again last night. On the way to the hotel by taxi, he was still thinking about the three points he would talk about in 10 minutes, in what order and process... The error tolerance rate of the map was extremely low, and Tao Chuang did not allow himself to make the slightest mistake.
That year, Tao Chuang received a direct investment of US$250 million from Masayoshi Son, which was the largest single financing in the history of the Internet at that time. PPTV has grown from a start-up company to 300 million users, and the number of users who have downloaded the PPTV mobile APP is close to 200 million. Revenue has increased more than 30 times in four years.
After that, he founded Zhizhuo Capital and Haitianhui and became an investor. Investment opened up his new horizons, and information in the fields of biomedicine, aerospace, and intelligent manufacturing came to him. He was active in the United States, Israel and other parts of the world. "I invested in some crazy projects with Elon Musk in Silicon Valley. Haha, there was one project where the Russians used 3D printing to build rockets."
In the business battlefield, he always felt that investment was a layer away. So in the process of investing in projects, he was also looking for the next entrepreneurial project and partners.
He spans multiple industries such as scientific research, entrepreneurship, and entertainment, integrating vertically and horizontally. The stage is broad and seemingly loose, but in fact he has been looking for an anchor point. Just like in the interview, when he freely narrated legendary past events, he was not immersed in the subject's narrative, but observed the environment carefully at any time. "The other person's expression and verbal reaction will let me know what topics he will talk about." He is interested in any topic that he would find boring.”
In his fourth venture, he anchored in spatiotemporal artificial intelligence technology to provide decision-making intelligence services to cities and enterprises.
04Space-time AI--the core engine of urban digital twins
According to the "White Paper on Spatiotemporal AI Empowering Digital Twin Cities", spatiotemporal AI is a new innovative application technology in the field of artificial intelligence. It aims to use spatiotemporal as an "index" to conduct spatiotemporal governance and integration of multi-source heterogeneous data, and leverage knowledge engineering. and AI algorithms for intelligent analysis to mine knowledge and assist decision-making. Tao Chuang likened it to a “digital twin brain.”
In 2015, Tao Chuang established Wayz.ai (synonymous with "location") in Zhangjiang, Shanghai. There is no need to look outside, as Zhangjiang is a frontier area for innovation in the science and technology industry, and it also has talent agglomeration and policy advantages. Tao Chuang, who has traveled the world, understands.
“To start a business, you must have a base.”
"You can't find the New World along the old map." Tao Chuang began to draw a brand new map. From the ancient "Ji Li Drum Car" to today's "AI algorithm", humans have increasingly higher demands for the accuracy of geographical information. The change of measurement methods from manual to artificial intelligence is inevitable for technological development. As an authoritative international expert in the fields of artificial intelligence and geographic information, Tao Chuang knows that this is the general trend.
Human beings are the measure of all things, and the scope of time and space that humans can measure is also the scope of cognition. The pursuit of high-precision intelligent maps is the fundamental need for people to understand the world. At the market level, whether it is urban governance, smart transportation or offline store operations, there is a large demand for high-precision smart maps.
Tao Chuang has counted, "China's largest convenience store group has nearly 25,000 stores. It may close nearly 1/10 of its stores every year and open about five to six thousand new stores. In the past, these stores were opened and closed randomly. Yes, relying on the experience of store staff, now we use AI algorithms to rate store locations and provide solutions. We can achieve an accuracy of more than 90% in predicting store sales."
Through insights into the customer base of offline stores, ecological data around the stores, and comparative analysis of multiple outlets, Wisdom Technology uses spatio-temporal AI technology to predict and plan the site selection, operations and sales of 100,000+ stores . Currently, its services include Banks, brands, retail, hotels, automobiles and other industries.
During the epidemic, Weizhi Technology integrated the crowd spatio-temporal dynamic model with the virus transmission model SEIR to establish a spatio-temporal propagation model for disease control, realized epidemic risk early warning for 30 million places across the country, and provided daily real-time update services to national agencies , received commendations from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and the Chinese Medical Association.
Since its establishment, Weizhi Technology's series of products and professional intelligent services have achieved commercial breakthroughs in the fields of smart cities, smart transportation, smart marketing, smart business and smart finance. Its service customers include Ping An, Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Wind, Huawei, and Xiaomi. , P&G, GM, Volkswagen, Meiyijia and other brands, covering many cities in Shanghai, Wuhan, Changsha, Chengdu, Zhuhai and Qingdao, with hundreds of partners. Weizhi Technology has become the only digital intelligence empowerment platform in China with full-stack spatio-temporal AI technology capabilities. In the trillion-level track of digital AI, and as the core technology of future metaverse cities, space-time AI has promising prospects.
"If Weizhi knew where to open a milk tea shop to make money, would it only provide decision-making empowerment instead of opening a milk tea shop itself?"
Faced with such a question, Tao Chuang answered humorously but candidly, "We are also thinking about this issue. Maybe we will continue to cross borders, but currently we are focusing on platform construction and services based on spatiotemporal AI technology." He said that he will be based on Explore and innovate in your own “base”.
When exploring new territory, he relies on more traditional paths, such as reading books. "When I sweep the floor at home, I will first find a book on how to clean." He discovered the benefits of books very early. When he was in college, he read recipes to please his girlfriend and taught himself cooking skills, which amazed his relatives and friends.
From the ivory tower to the crowd, he saw the vastness of the world. He recalled that when he went skiing with Wang Shi, the ski trails were divided into green trails, blue trails, and black trails. He usually skates on the green and blue trails, but Wang Shi directly skates not on the highest-level black trails, but on the 'wild trails' where no one skates. When he saw this 60-year-old man doing somersaults and wrestling on the cable car and standing up again and again, he thought of his fights with the top players in his life. People are "frogs in the well", and success is "not taking the usual path".