Winning the new financial era

Chapter 468 The upcoming harvest of 2018
Martial Arts World Company is registered in Hong Kong, and its actual office is in Chengdu.

The company is not big, and it is very convenient to integrate. Zhang Yida has left these matters to Zhang Lan to follow up.

He took a Gulfstream G650ER to the UK and met Ed Newton Ricks, the founder of music AI startup Jukedeck.

People with Newton in their names are usually not far behind, and this Ricks is no exception.

Ricks studied composition from childhood through university and later studied music theory at Cambridge University.

In 2012, after attending a computer science lecture held by his girlfriend's alma mater Harvard University, he was inspired to start the music AI company with his good friend Stobs from the college choir.

The company, called Jukedeck, focuses on applying artificial intelligence to music composition.

AI music mainly satisfies two aspects, one is background music, and the other is music creation.

Jukedeck can quickly and cheaply create unique background music for a large number of videos, games, etc., solving the problems of high music copyright fees and time-consuming music editing.

At the same time, they also provide help for non-professionals to realize their musical ideas.

Zhang Yida was eyeing this company, but he couldn't stand the endless blackmail from the three major records, so he had to find a way to counteract it.

In a villa in the suburbs of London, Zhang Yida met the two founders of Jukedeck.

The two were very enthusiastic. As soon as they saw Zhang Yida, they began to praise how popular Musical.ly was and how much they loved it.

Both of them are in their early thirties, and they feel like young men in their early twenties.

Zhang Yida was not surprised, and exchanged a few pleasantries with the two of them.

Then, the two took Zhang Yida to visit their company.

The company is small, with a total of 18 people including the two founders.

Ricks introduced: "Mr. Zhang, although we don't have many people, we are all elites.

There are 15 people who are engineers in different fields, and they have artificial intelligence researchers who specialize in core AI systems;

There are software engineers who belong to music production experts;
There are also engineers for product, full line, infrastructure, etc...

All the people in the team are professionals in music, and at the same time they understand artificial intelligence, machinery, music information retrieval and other technologies. "

Zhang Yida understood, they are all compound talents, all-rounders!

"I heard that you have received two rounds of venture capital, £62.5 from Cambridge Enterprise and £200 million from Cambridge Innovation Fund?"

Ricks nodded. He was very clear about Zhang Yida's intentions, so he spared no effort to introduce his company.

"Jukedeck is not the kind of company that burns money all the time but has no practical applications.

We officially launched Jukedeck MAKE, an online music creation application based on artificial intelligence synthesis technology, two years ago.

On this platform, by setting the music type, piano, folk, rock, ambient sound, pop, etc.;

Mood: Joy, melancholy, anger, instruments, rhythm and other parameters can automatically generate a piece of music in MP10 format with a duration of 1 minute and 30 seconds in less than 3 minutes.

The application will not limit the number of music generated, but users must pay a certain fee if they want to download.

$0.99 is the fee that users need to pay to download music once, but the premise is that the service provider must be an individual or a company with less than 10 employees, and the user only has the right to use the music;

Companies of 10 or more pay $21.99 for a single download of the music, again only for that piece of music;

If you want to own the copyright of a piece of music, no matter whether it is an individual or a large or small company, you need to pay $199. …”

Zhang Yida has figured out their source of income, and individual users are just here to take pictures.

And corporate users, such as game companies, pay $21.99 or $199 to buy a piece of music to make a game soundtrack.

This kind of music is still not as good as a master-level master who composes it himself, but it is basically enough for gamers to listen to it.

For Jukedeck, there is no cost to speak of, music can be mass-produced.

The Jukedeck system feeds hundreds of tunes into an artificial neural network, which then analyzes the tunes.

Calculate the probability of a note being followed by another note and the matching of chords, and then synthesize a work with a similar style.An automated production process will convert it into audio material.

But at present, Jukedeck's songs cannot be emotionally captured, which is also the research direction of the company in the next stage.

In order to check the goods, Zhang Yida found his favorite song "Blue Lotus" from his mobile phone, played it for the two of them, and arranged a task for them to make a song similar in style to Blue Lotus.

Ricks understood that this was a test for himself, and after listening to Blue Lotus several times, he activated the mobile app and composed a parody song for Zhang Yida on the spot.

After Zhang Yida listened, he could only say that it was passable, and it was indeed not so interesting.

But for him, who is not very accomplished in music, he is already above the passing line.

Douvision and Musical.ly need background music, and an immature music AI company alone cannot meet all the needs, and it can only be said to be an attempt.

However, AI technology has already taken the lead, and it is necessary for Zhonghe Group to invest more resources in this field.

After chatting with the two founders and confirming that there was no major problem, Zhang Yida arranged for the AI ​​team from China to start a technical exchange with the Jukedeck team.

Although it is not certain that this company is a parallel importer, Zhang Yida does not understand technology, so to be on the safe side, he still needs professionals to inspect the goods.

After the technical team had finished discussing and confirmed that there was no problem, Zhang Yida arranged for the negotiating team to start negotiation with the two founders on quotations.

Ricks and Stobs asked a lot, and they opened their mouths to 5000 million pounds.

After all, the professional negotiating team is professional. They negotiated the price from multiple perspectives such as technical reserves, revenue, and market prospects, and lowered the price all the way down to 1200 million pounds, equivalent to 1600 million US dollars.

After discussing with the team, Ricks finally agreed.

After the acquisition of Jukedeck, in addition to obtaining all the intellectual property rights of the company, 18 employees will also join the artificial intelligence laboratory set up by Zhonghe Group in London.

With the growing of Zhonghe Group, in addition to opening overseas operating branches, it has gradually begun to set up R&D centers.

Silicon Valley in the United States, Singapore, London and other places have set up R&D centers and laboratories with the purpose of attracting more talents.

It is similar to the reason why technology companies such as Microsoft and Oracle set up R&D centers in China.

……

Knowing that Zhang Yi had arrived in Europe, Li Yonghong, the newly promoted chairman of AC Milan, even made a phone call in person.

"Brother Zhang, you have helped my brother a lot this time. Would you like to come to Milan to watch a football game? I will reserve the best box for you..."

During the phone call, Li Yonghong was full of energy, and it could be seen that he was in good spirits.

As a creditor, Temasek has been following Li Yonghong's every move recently.

Including spending 2 million euros during the summer transfer window, buying 11 new aids, almost giving the whole team a big change;

In the stands, the excited fans even held up their scarves and wrote "We are really rich" and other details. They wrote a special report and sent it to Zhang Yida by Li Hengbo.

Zhang Yida understood Li Yonghong's plan at a glance. He spent money on players to improve his performance. As long as he wins the Champions League and receives high bonuses, the club's finances will be greatly improved, and the valuation will also increase.

At that time, whether he sells the club or continues to operate, he will have a way out.

Zhang Yida looked at AC Milan's results, and was not optimistic that Li Yonghong would be able to make a comeback, and most likely he would still turn over like in his previous life.

Zhang Yida had already informed Li Hengbo that something was wrong.Immediately took over AC Milan.

Zhang Yida smiled and declined Li Yonghong's invitation, making a pretense that it was already January and he was going back to China to organize the company's annual meeting.

Li Yonghong stopped persuading him, and thanked Zhang Yida for his help on the phone, and told Zhang Yida to watch the AC Milan match when he was free, and reserve the best seat for him.

No one could tell that the gentle, respectful and frugal uncle on the phone turned out to be a big liar.

Zhang Yida also returned to China in a hurry, because he received news that Handing Group had a problem with its capital chain, and it was about to start a tearful sale.

　Chapter 469 has been automatically deleted a lot, and the chapter names are gone, which slightly affects the reading experience.Just wrote a bit of a mother, hey, let's see and cherish!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)