In February 2023, Zhou Hongyi , founder, chairman and CEO of 360 Company , announced that he would devote all his efforts to the development of artificial intelligence and launch a large-scale model product "360 Intelligent Brain" to cope with declining performance. However, the product market performance is not ideal, the company's R&D investment in the field of artificial intelligence is low, and performance and user experience need to be improved.
Original article: https://36kr.com/p/2588940541786759
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After the news was announced, the company's stock price rose by more than 300%. 360 claims to have GPT-like products and provides massive data to support ChatGPT training. However, the download volume of "360 Intelligent Brain" in the market is far lower than that of its competitors, its performance is poor, and it failed to achieve the expected success.
Although Zhou Hongyi publicly stated that he would go all out to develop artificial intelligence, the company's semi-annual report showed a decline in R&D investment. As of January 3, 2024, in the Huawei App Market, "360 Smart Brain" has been downloaded only 40,000 times, which is far behind its competitors. 360 failed to fully invest in the field of artificial intelligence as promised, and both product performance and market response fell short of expectations.
On Huawei App Market, as of January 3, 2024, Baidu’s large model product “Wen Xin Yi Yan” has been downloaded more than 18.04 million times, Douyin’s “Doubao” has been downloaded 10.3 million times, and iFlytek’s “iFlytek Spark” has been downloaded 10.3 million times. "Nearly 11 million downloads. However, 360’s “360 Intelligent Brain” has been downloaded only 40,000 times, which is far behind the above mentioned companies. Compared with "Wen Xin Yi Yan", the mobile terminal "360 Intelligent Brain" does not have the image analysis function. In addition, the regular Q&A of "360 Intelligent Brain" is relatively laggy and the computing speed is slow. It is not difficult to understand why the download volume of "360 Intelligent Brain" on Huawei Mall is so low.
Judging from the product effects, it is difficult to say that Zhou Hongyi is all in artificial intelligence. R&D expenditures also fail to reflect Zhou Hongyi’s All-in determination. Data shows that 360’s R&D expenses in the first three quarters of 2023 were 2.314 billion yuan, compared with 2.522 billion yuan in the same period of 2022. R&D investment fell by 8.25% year-on-year.
360 continues to suffer losses. Facing the downturn in its main business, the company urgently needs to find new growth points. Zhou Hongyi stated that 360 is making every effort to transform, but the capital market pays more attention to operating results. Although the company is fully committed to promoting large-model products, market data is poor and there is a large gap between product experience and competitors. Under such adverse circumstances, the stock price rose sharply in the short term and then returned to its original point. In order to achieve a successful transformation, senior management may need to start from themselves. 360 is still not having a good life.
