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"science and technology innovation board daily" september 20th (reporter yang xiaoxiao)recently, ai education service provider jingzhunxue announced at the yunqi conference that it has recently completed a new round of financing of 200 million yuan, with the investor being alibaba group. at the same time, jingzhunxue also released the application product super anthropomorphic one-to-one ai teacher, which is developed based on the education vertical model created by alibaba's tongyi model.

according to public information, jingzhunxue was founded in 2018. prior to this, it had received angel round investment from yuanjing capital and strategic investment from kuaishou. yuanjing capital was founded by alibaba ceo wu yongming in 2015. regarding the topic of intelligent education, wu yongming mentioned in his speech at the yunqi conference that ai computing is accelerating the penetration of education, "in all walks of life, the invisible new industrial revolution is quietly evolving."

it can be seen that many internet giants have made plans for smart education. in addition to jingzhunxue, alibaba is also an external institutional investor in zuoyebang, whose question.ai currently has the largest number of overseas users in the industry. gauth, another company that can compete with question.ai, is backed by bytedance. unlike alibaba, kuaishou and others that have made plans through strategic investments, bytedance once regarded education as the direction of future business development.

generative ai reconstructs intelligent education

since its inception, precision learning has proposed to empower education with ai technology, that is, by exhausting enough corpus and question banks and annotating them (for example, a question is associated with several knowledge points) to form a knowledge system.

however, an industry insider familiar with ai education told the science and technology innovation board daily reporter that the previous application of ai technology in education was extremely dependent on the question banks accumulated by various companies. "the more content accumulated in the question bank, the more complete the answers users get to their questions. if the question bank does not have it, it often requires manual output behind the scenes." the insider said that therefore, for companies that have previously promoted the concept of ai education, the competitive barriers are not actually in technology, but in whether the question bank is large enough and whether the market promotion is sufficient.

the development of generative ai has reshaped the field of intelligent education, truly forming an interactive closed loop of questioning and tutoring. previously, yang renbin, ceo of jingzhunxue, said that the latest learning machine equipped with the above-mentioned super-human ai teacher is such an ai native product, "its user experience will be fundamentally different from all previous learning machines. the interaction is no longer about tapping the screen, nor watching pre-recorded videos, but about talking directly to the ai ​​teacher throughout the whole process. the explanation and blackboard videos are also generated by ai in real time, the learning process is also promoted by ai, and the interactive interface is also generated by ai, thus creating a natural interactive experience."

while updating the technical implementation, yang renbin also stated in a previous interview with the media that the business model of precision learning has been fully shifted to to c.

although smart education has reignited the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs and capital due to the development of generative ai, the above-mentioned industry insiders who are concerned about ai education told reporters that from the current situation, generative ai-enabled education still faces huge problems.

"first, the computing cost is high. the education model is a typical vertical model that requires special training, and the inference cost in the subsequent product application process cannot be ignored. education is also a special and important industry with restrictions in terms of policies and market acceptance. therefore, only when the delivery level and usage cost meet expectations can such products be fully accepted by the industry, the market and end users."

internet giants’ investment in education

alibaba's investment in smart education is not limited to precision learning. the reporter of "science and technology innovation board daily" noticed that the $1.6 billion e+ round of financing completed by zuoyebang in 2020 was invested by alibaba. other investors include tiger global, softbank vision fund i, sequoia capital china fund, fountainvest partners, etc.

as a veteran online education company, zuoyebang has also joined this wave of generative ai. in september 2023, zuoyebang released its self-developed education model, the galaxy model. it is also reported that zuoyebang has launched a number of ai applications, including ai writing tools designed for students and professionals, chinese learning assistants based on ai models, and ai cameras.

in addition to alibaba, zuoyebang also received investment from baidu in its a+ round of financing. it can be seen that all the leading internet companies have actively invested in smart education and its predecessor, online education.

kuaishou, which has invested in jingzhunxue, has stated that it will work with jingzhunxue to recruit front-line teachers to join kuaishou classrooms. on the one hand, it will expand the team of teaching content creators, and on the other hand, it will expand its educational coverage by leveraging the platform's large traffic.

bytedance, which also started out as a content creator, has also invested heavily in its education business. data shows that its overseas education product gauth ranked second among us education apps in the first quarter of this year; its official website shows that the number of users has exceeded 200 million.

tencent also pays much attention to the field of education. since march 2020, tencent has successively invested in education-related companies such as yuanfudao, vipkid, and spark education. among them, tencent has made multiple rounds of investment in yuanfudao. however, because of this, tencent received an antitrust penalty from the state administration for market regulation.

according to tencent's penalty decision, in november 2018, tencent signed a round f equity subscription agreement with yuanfudao through its wholly-owned subsidiary tencent mobility limited and its affiliates. tencent subscribed 83.33% of the shares issued in this round of financing for 1.652 billion yuan. after the transaction, tencent held 15.41% of yuanfudao's equity. the penalty decision stated that "this transaction is an equity acquisition"; tencent "acquired control of yuanfudao" through this acquisition.

since then, tencent has rarely invested in education projects, but has focused more on self-developed b-side supply. in november last year, tencent education released three service capabilities based on "cloud + ai + connection": smart campus service cloud, scientific research ecosystem cloud and education ai.

at present, the overseas market has also shown great interest in the intelligent education field reshaped by aigc. openai, a leading company in generative ai, has invested in a number of ai education companies, including heeyo, an ai learning game generation company, class companion, an ai homework grading platform, and speak, an ai oral training platform.