According to the center’s executive, the SMC Shanghai Foundation Model Innovation Center is catalyzing the rapid advancement of the artificial intelligence large model industry leveraging Shanghai’s AI prowess.
Officially unveiled in 2023, SMC stands as one of China’s first dedicated incubators and accelerators for large-scale AI models. It aims to fortify Shanghai’s pursuit of establishing a world-class, globally competitive AI industry cluster.
“Shanghai is an outward-facing market boasting abundant resources and a conducive market environment, granting it distinct competitive advantages in the internet and AI sectors,” said Chen Haici, general manager of SMC.
To solidify the foundation for resident enterprises, SMC has established five major functional platforms on computing power dispatching, open data, evaluation service, financial service, and comprehensive service, supporting companies in terms of text corpus and computer resources, investment funds, and filling guidance.
It also extends top-priority policy support to accelerate the world premieres of various small vertical scenario models across consumer, entertainment, finance, and other major application domains, expediting large model innovations’ integration into diverse industries.
“We not only offer sufficient computing power resources, but also assist enterprises in managing, allocating, and optimizing their computing power usage through the computing power dispatching platform,” Chen said.
The Shanghai government is mobilizing social computing power resources to support large model enterprises, as it allocated dedicated fiscal funds for computing power support, and the Xuhui district has also formulated relevant supporting policies, according to Chen.
Chen highlighted the increasingly vibrant interaction among community enterprises driven by frequent entrepreneurial idea exchanges, such as private thought sessions centered around the AIGC track. “These have fostered a positive ecosystem reaction as founders share business strategies and technology forecasts,” he said.
“We have benefited from the presence of many large model enterprises at the center, facilitating horizontal exchanges and broadening our perspectives, including access to leading market insights,” said Shen Weifeng, vice-president of HiDream.ai, an early resident specializing in using AI to generate images and videos.
Zhang Bing, a product manager at Midu, one of the first enterprises to settle in the center focusing on governmental large models, said, “Our team started with only around 10 people last year, and now we have over 100 employees, significantly exceeding our expectations. The most crucial factor is the attention and support from the national and local governments for this industry.”
With the first and second phases of the nearly 20,000 square meter SMC innovation ecosystem already operational, and the third phase concurrently being planned, nearly 70 large model-related enterprises have already joined the community.
SMC has set ambitious goals, according to Chen, including 100,000 square meters of innovation space, over 100 resident enterprises, 1,000 large industry model applications, and the nurturing of a trillion-yuan emerging industry.
“Propelled by the industry’s rapid growth momentum, our targets have already exceeded expectations,” Chen said. “We aspire to become the Launchpad for founders of China’s leading large model enterprises.”
