▲ Taizhiyun AI Supercomputing Accelerator held its first AI Startup Demo Day event at the 2024 Asia Bay Startup Southern Conference, where 8 outstanding startups shared how they can use AI to improve their operational efficiency and enhance customer experience.
AI has been one of the hottest industry keywords in recent years. Not only are companies launching AI adoption plans, but there are also more and more AI-related solutions and startups in the market. Recognizing the AI trend, after years of operating its AI ecosystem, Taiwan AI Cloud has fully upgraded its original partner program and established the AI Supercomputing Accelerator in 2023. This accelerator provides AI startups with comprehensive business development resources and technical support. In March 2024, it officially moved into the Kaohsiung Asia Bay Startup Park. In August, it held the "2024 Startup Demo Day" for the first time at the 2024 Asia Bay Startup Southern Conference, hoping to connect startup resources in the north and south, improve Taiwan's AI ecosystem, and accumulate competitiveness for entering the international market.
"In the future, we should not only actively promote exchanges between startups and local Kaohsiung businesses, but also further establish a solid foundation and accelerate the smart transformation of local industries in Kaohsiung through high-quality AI application solutions from startups," emphasized Chou Ping-hui, CEO of Taiwan AI Supercomputing Accelerator.
▲ Chou Ping-hui, CEO of the Taizhiyun AI Supercomputing Accelerator Program
Targeting the needs of startups, Taizhiyun AI Supercomputing Accelerator offers three major services.
Taiwan currently has many startup accelerators, but why has the AI supercomputing accelerator attracted more than 60 startups in less than two years? The key lies in the fact that Taiwan AI Cloud provides Asia's first AI supercomputer for industrial and commercial use, AIHPC high-speed computing resources with GPUs as the core of computing power, and cloud platform services to create enterprise-level generative AI services. Furthermore, with the support of the innovative energy and global market resources of its parent company ASUS Group, it provides corresponding assistance to startups in areas such as AI technology optimization, market expansion, and fundraising.
Firstly, AI technology optimization not only provides startups with a free Taiwan AI Cloud supercomputing quota worth NT$300,000, but also effectively reduces startups' R&D time and costs through Taiwan AI Cloud's one-stop AI solutions, including AI model development tool platforms such as AFS generative AI outsourcing services, FFM Formosa large model, and online and offline deployment tools.
Secondly, regarding market expansion, in addition to regularly holding events such as Startup Demo Day, themed forums, and cross-domain exchange meetings, we have also exclusively created the "AI Supercomputing Innovation Consortium." This year, we have successively held "AI Innovation Days" with large enterprises to address their internal pain points. We hope that by exchanging ideas, technologies, and creativity between corporate executives and startups, we can inspire AI creativity among our colleagues, jointly consider how to launch higher-quality and more personalized services, optimize internal operational efficiency, and effectively bring cooperation opportunities to startups, successfully collaborating with large enterprises and obtaining orders.
Thirdly, we raised funds by inviting ASUS Group's internal venture capital fund, Taizhi Cloud's shareholder group, and large venture capital partners to participate in one-on-one investment matchmaking events to help startups find funding and overcome the challenge of insufficient resources.
With the support of the AI supercomputing accelerator program, many startups have achieved remarkable results. The eight outstanding startups in this round have demonstrated outstanding performance in various fields.
Applying AI to optimize internal business processes
In improving internal business processes, Ruisheng Innovation, Aikon Technology, and Haiyan Technology have all integrated their internal knowledge bases and used generative AI to improve operational efficiency.
Ruisheng Innovation, through its self-developed CROSSBOT platform, helps companies develop internal AI assistants to answer colleagues' work-related questions, saving them time searching for information. For example, a Hong Kong-style tea brand used CROSSBOT to create an internal virtual assistant, significantly improving internal operational efficiency.
Aikon Technology, focusing on the perspective of enterprise Go-To-Market teams, launched the Growise AI Content Automation Management System, which can automatically generate marketing copy, audio-visual transcripts, Q&A, and other content. For example, media and broadcasting companies can use Growise AI to generate various marketing copy for program videos with one click, significantly saving marketing staff's work time.
Seasalt.ai's customer experience platform addresses the daily challenges businesses face in managing numerous missed calls, automated appointments, customer acquisition, and customer service. For external customer service, businesses can use SeaChat to automate customer communications within minutes, responding instantly via SMS, Line, WhatsApp, or phone. For internal workflow optimization, businesses can use SeaMeet, a meeting assistant that recognizes meetings with mixed English and Chinese, automatically generating meeting minutes or summaries of seminar key points. This technology is powered by Seasalt.ai's proprietary speech recognition technology, which is more accurate than Google and faster than Azure. SeaMeet helps executives and CEOs improve meeting minutes and team meeting efficiency, ensuring effective discussion, decision-making, and execution.
▲ Taizhiyun AI Supercomputing Accelerator Startup Partner - Aikon Technology
Using AI to create warm and caring services
In terms of external services, MOLO AI, AB Formosa, and SoftCloud all use AI to create warm and personalized services to optimize customer experience.
Morrow AI focuses on LLM and AI-powered smart manufacturing, using LLM to help the semiconductor manufacturing industry resolve customer complaints about quality issues or identify potential product problems. In addition, it also provides predictive AI solutions applicable to both smart manufacturing and sustainable energy conservation.
Yabo Formosa utilizes a multi-technology-driven AI brain to create a brand-new AI-powered intelligent customer service system for customer service and product promotion. This system can be implemented on any device and channel that can reach customers. For example, by using the AI brain to create an intelligent interactive wine cabinet and placing it in convenience stores, AI simulates human voice interaction, suggests suitable wines based on customer needs, and engages in marketing interactive games with customers, successfully increasing sales by 30%.
Shuoyun Technology combines AI virtual characters and IPs to serve its clients. It has developed a virtual interactive multimodal AI platform to enable users to create AI virtual character IPs with charismatic personalities and opinions. These IPs can be applied to virtual influencer live streaming, product endorsement, educational interaction, game companionship, and other applications. This design, which is close to that of a real person, not only creates buzz but also makes people more willing to interact with AI.
▲ Taizhiyun AI Supercomputing Accelerator Startup Partner - Yabo Formosa
Communication and medical-specific chips
Based on array antenna technology, IC design company Fanjing Technology has independently developed a dedicated baseband chip suitable for large or medium-sized open base station radio frequency units (RUs) and satellite communications. This chip can bring three major benefits: first, it reduces energy consumption, saving an average of about 30-60% of power compared to traditional 4G base stations, and saving up to 2 times the standby time of mobile phones; second, it expands the signal coverage range; and third, it improves communication performance.
Fengkang Microfluidic Chips, focusing on the medical field, has developed a rapid detection chip for acute kidney injury (AKI), targeting kidney disease, which has the highest reimbursement rate under Taiwan's National Health Insurance. This chip can detect patient conditions at least two days earlier, allowing for timely treatment. It can also group and classify patients based on their condition to develop appropriate treatment plans, effectively reducing the future number of people needing dialysis. Huang Ya-ling, CEO of Fengkang Microfluidic Chips, pointed out that acute kidney injury can easily lead to multiple organ failure, and 2 million people worldwide die from it each year. The company hopes to reduce the mortality rate through this rapid AKI detection chip.
Looking ahead, the AI Supercomputing Accelerator will stay true to its original mission and continue to promote the rapid growth of AI startups in Taiwan. It aims not only to build bridges for innovative collaborations between more companies and startups, but also to leverage this wave of AI to step onto the international stage and let the world see Taiwan's AI soft power.
Source:Digital Age