The Chengdu tech scene has been buzzing these days—China’s Edge AI leader Yuntian Life has established its second headquarters in the Tianfu New Area’s innovation ecosystem. This is no small feat; consider this, the player that is racing the fastest in the national large model arena has chosen Chengdu to develop a major strategy in edge computing. What is the underlying significance of this move?
Standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of Building W7 in the Tianfu headquarters business district, Yuntian Life’s technical director, Mr. Zhang, pulled out his phone to demonstrate: he took a quick photo of the café below the office building, and the AI system extracted the customer flow curve for the past three months in just two seconds. “This is the hardcore strength of Edge AI; data doesn’t need to be sent to the cloud, the device can understand it on its own,” Mr. Zhang said proudly. This AI unicorn, which started in Shenzhen in 2014 and just went public on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board last year, is clearly aiming to create an ‘intelligent edge’ ecosystem in the western region by bringing its core technology to Chengdu.
You might ask, what is so valuable about Edge AI? For example, the facial recognition payment we use every day and the intelligent security checks in subways require real-time responses. If we had to wait for data to be transmitted to a cloud server thousands of miles away, it would be too late. Edge computing acts like a local brain for devices, ensuring response speed while saving over 70% on data transmission costs. According to Chengdu’s Economic and Information Bureau, there are already over 5,000 Edge AI devices deployed in smart city management and industrial quality inspection, a number that has more than quadrupled in the past three years.
However, Yuntian Life’s move is risky. The multimodal large models they focus on have training costs that can make ordinary companies tremble. Back in 2021, an AI company in Beijing spent 260 million yuan to barely launch a city-level visual large model. Mr. Zhang revealed to us, “Chengdu’s industrial ecosystem is well-structured, from chip-level Haiguang Information to application-level XGIMI Technology, you can cover the entire industrial chain within half an hour’s drive.” This is true; the Tianfu New Area has just organized the 500,000 square meter Fengqi Valley transformation base, waiting for these AI hard-tech companies to engage in ‘technical matchmaking’.
Engineer Li shared some insider information with us. The new edge computing box they are debugging can monitor the temperature of medicines in a cold chain warehouse at minus 20 degrees Celsius in real-time, a task that previously required three engineers to monitor the screen without blinking. “Do you know why we chose Chengdu for trial production?” Li said mysteriously, lowering his voice, “Just 300 kilometers to the west is the largest biopharmaceutical cold chain base in the country, and we can easily find customers to refine our products.” This kind of ‘close combat’ innovation is key to the breakthrough of Edge AI.
However, insiders are well aware that edge computing is currently a battlefield. Huawei invested 2 billion yuan last year in Chengdu to develop the Ascend AI ecosystem, and Tencent has also established the first intelligent connected vehicle laboratory in the western region in the Tianfu New Area. Mr. Wang from the Tianfu New Area’s Sci-Tech Innovation Office calculated: “There are now over 230 AI-related companies in the area, but less than 30% survive past Series B financing.” This statement sends chills down the spine, especially considering that one of the four fallen AI dragons in 2022 had once spent lavishly in Chengdu.
As night falls, the light show on the Sci-Tech Innovation Island begins on time. The flowing data ripples on the glass curtain walls vividly represent the city’s AI ambitions. Yuntian Life’s logo shines on the rooftop, reflecting with Huawei next door and BOE across the street. While AI giants from Beijing and Shanghai are still focused on large model parameters, Chengdu is weaving a grounded intelligent network—here, algorithms are not lofty concepts floating in the cloud, but practical wisdom embedded in the streets. Perhaps in less than three years, when we buy candied fruit on Chunxi Road, we will look up to see AI monitoring the city’s pulse through its capillaries.