CometLabs: Global Intelligent Machine Industry Map

This industry map comes from Comet Labs' San Francisco laboratory, which has conducted in-depth research on the global intelligent machine field for several months and completed this global intelligent machine (robot/artificial intelligence) startup industry map. Through this industry map, Chinese entrepreneurs can have a deep and detailed understanding of the global intelligent machine industry. (Nova)

Smart machines are about to change the world, and Comet Labs' industry map helps entrepreneurs understand the new world.

CometLabs is committed to creating outstanding startups in the field of intelligent machines (robotics/artificial intelligence). In our research, we have seen many excellent startups accelerating and improving the development of the entire intelligent machine field through their own products and technologies, thereby changing the world. This concept coincides with Comet Labs' corporate vision.

Based on in-depth research on these companies, Comet Labs found that the world's intelligent machine startups can be divided into the following four categories:

1. Enabling technology

2. Industry Solution Company

3. Enterprise

4. Consumer

Technology platform companies: They sell technology solutions to other technology companies or startups, thereby helping these companies integrate advanced technologies into their own product development, saving resources and costs to the greatest extent and avoiding reinventing the wheel.

Technology platform companies provide the core underlying technology products and services in the field of intelligent machines. From a global perspective, the technological advantages of platform companies mostly come from academic laboratories of excellent universities. They provide the latest and most advanced sensors, artificial intelligence algorithms, storage and other underlying technology support. Through core underlying technologies, they help industry solutions (Industry), enterprise tools (Enterprise), and consumer-oriented (Consumer) startups quickly build their own products.

After in-depth research, Comet Labs found that platform companies account for 20% of the mainstream US smart machine market.

For example, companies like Soft Robotics and Megvii are both platform companies. Soft Robotics has developed a new type of robot gripper that is cheap and easy to operate. The development of the soft gripper enables the robot to handle multiple fragile objects without changing the end effector, and can be used in many fields such as medicine, health care, and logistics. Megvii, in which Lenovo Star, the founder of Comet Labs, participated in the investment, has breakthrough technical advantages in software fields such as visual recognition and deep learning, and provides related technologies to more companies to build their own products.

Industry solution companies (Industry): Industry solution companies mainly provide solutions for traditional enterprises or system integrators in the industry. These solutions need to be integrated with other IT systems of traditional enterprises to help enterprises create new intelligent management and operations. In the research, we analyzed medical care, agriculture, warehousing and logistics, and manufacturing industries respectively.

Industry solution companies need to have a deep understanding of the needs of traditional enterprises, their existing business processes, and existing system architecture. Industry companies may not have a leading advantage in terms of technology, but their product value lies in providing complete solutions for some specific business pain points of traditional enterprises. For industry companies, many business processes of traditional enterprises have long been solidified, so the biggest challenge is to use innovative thinking to optimize the business processes of traditional enterprises. They need to be able to combine technology and industry knowledge, connect their products with the existing systems of enterprises, and manage operations according to the procurement processes of enterprises.

Industry solution smart startups mainly focus on a specific vertical field. For example, Omada is a company that specializes in providing health plans and chronic disease solutions, Blue River provides solutions for increasing agricultural production, Grey Orange can help optimize warehousing, and Savioke can help hotels provide small item delivery services.

In the field of intelligent machines, industry solution companies account for 45% of the market share, with the largest number of companies and the most noteworthy. Among them, 50% of industry solution startups are oriented to the medical field.

Enterprise tool company (Enterprise): The characteristic of enterprise tool company is that it is oriented towards the internal part of the enterprise, providing general solutions to help enterprises improve internal processes and enhance work efficiency.

Enterprise tool companies use intelligent machine products to provide enterprises with general solutions such as customer management, advertising, expense expenditure and legal assistance, so that enterprises can improve internal processes and work efficiency. This general solution is applicable to all enterprises, so the competition between brands of enterprise companies is very fierce. How to carve a larger market share from the same piece of cake requires enterprise companies to have more effective solution products and super sales teams than their peers.

Enterprise tool companies help physical companies effectively manage internal data, avoid cybercrime and reduce internal resource consumption. Enterprise companies have grown rapidly in recent years and account for 35% of the market share in the field of intelligent machines.

For example, BEAM has launched a telepresence robot that looks like a tablet computer that can be moved around with a stand and wheels to better facilitate cross-regional multi-team office collaboration. The TextioHR platform helps companies improve the quality and efficiency of recruitment.

Consumer: Their products are sold directly to end users.

The core of a consumer-oriented company is to build up its own brand awareness, design eye-catching products, and continuously optimize the products. For consumer-oriented companies, they need to spend more time and energy on researching sales channels, advertising, and marketing methods, and are also plagued by price wars. Many consumer-oriented companies are large in scale but have meager profits.

Consumer-oriented companies have realized the advantages of the smart machine field and are transforming towards intelligence. These types of companies account for about 1% of the market share in the smart machine field.

CometLabs believes that only 1% of smart machine startups are developing consumer-oriented products. Although there are many startups developing consumer-oriented hardware, Comet Labs believes that most products are not yet truly intelligent due to price and technology maturity factors. Therefore, these companies are not included in the research scope.

For example, the Roomba vacuum cleaner, Apple's Siri voice system, and Segway's balancing car products are all typical consumer companies.

By Comet Labs San Francisco