At the close of trading on October 31, Doushen Education (SZ300010, stock price 10.80 yuan, market value 22.32 billion yuan) once again hit the daily limit of "20CM", achieving "four consecutive boards". At the close of trading on November 4, the company's stock price closed at 10.80 yuan, down 15.63% throughout the day.
This education company, which only completed bankruptcy and reorganization this year, got on the "Zhipu Concept Stock" when Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zhipu)'s autonomous intelligent AutoGLM became an instant hit, and has since started a "continuous" The road to "listing" has surprised and puzzled investors.
Dou Shen Education seems to be well prepared. In addition to Wisdom, according to the information disclosed by the company at the press conference on October 30, it has also cooperated with Microsoft. The new product Doushen AI relies on the technical framework and ideas of Microsoft's GraphRAG (Graph Attention Graph Reasoning).
Aiming at AI education, Microsoft is on the left and Wisdom is on the right. Can Doushen Education win this round?
On October 30, DouShen Education released DouShen AI, an integrated end-model product. The picture shows Doushen Education in Zhongguancun Software Park, Haidian District, Beijing on August 27, 2024. Visual China Map
Signed a cooperation framework agreement with Zhipu
People feel refreshed when happy events occur. At an AI conference on October 30, Dou Xin, the chairman of Doushen Education, always had a smile on his face. For education companies that have been in the process of transformation for a long time, finding a promising direction really consumes too much energy. However, in the more than a year since ChatGPT set off the AI wave, the concept and products of AI+ education have become commonplace. How can Doushen Education “break out of the siege”?
Judging from the information currently disclosed by Doushen Education, the company has two major partners in AI+ education: Microsoft, and the large-scale enterprise intelligence spectrum that has recently caused heated discussions with its independent intelligent agent AutoGLM.
On October 30, DouShen Education released DouShen AI, an integrated end-model product. According to Dou Xin, after Doushen Education reflected on teaching and learning, it found that “teaching students in accordance with their aptitude” was difficult to implement because of the lack of underlying technology support. The trained AI large language model may solve such problems. In the process of building the knowledge graph, Doushen AI relied on Microsoft's GraphRAG technical framework and ideas, and combined the raw materials and analytical principles of Doushen AI's teaching content for encapsulation and boundaryization.
As for how to remove the "AI taste" of content, Dou Xin believes that simple prompt words or workflows cannot solve this problem. It requires the use of hierarchical combinations of emotional content, which has a very complex structure. To this end, DouShen has developed a fifth-generation content production platform - DouShen Jiuxiao content production platform. According to Doushen Education, the system complements Microsoft GraphRAG, enabling large models to output content that is consistent with the teaching style of famous teachers and ensuring the accuracy of information.
In addition to releasing new products, Doushen Education also signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Zhipu. "Daily Economic News" reporters learned at the scene that the two parties established a joint venture, in which Zhipu invested 125 million yuan, and the cooperation with Zhipu has also become a major "sharp weapon" for Doushen Education.
Gain favor in the secondary market
More importantly, Doushen Education, which has caught the AI "express train", has also won the favor of the secondary market. As of the close of trading on October 31, Doushen Education closed at 11.5 yuan per share, rising by the daily limit for four consecutive trading days.
At the close of trading on November 1, the stock price of Doushen Education closed at 12.80 yuan, up 11.21% throughout the day. At the close of trading on November 4, the company's stock price closed at 10.80 yuan, down 15.63% throughout the day.
At the above-mentioned press conference, Doushen Education demonstrated several multi-modal real-time interactive education functions that will be launched next month in cooperation with Zhipu: composition comments, after-school tutoring, writing consultants, recitation guidance, answer guidance, and pre-class guidance. Preview. However, Doushen Education did not reveal too many details about its cooperation with Zhipu at the meeting.
The "Daily Economic News" reporter noticed that on October 26, the "Ciyuan Algorithm Laboratory" WeChat public account published an article titled "Joining forces, how Doushen and Zhipu can go further on 42% AGI" article, the main operator of this WeChat public account is Beijing Zhimingxing Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhimingxing"). According to Tianyancha data, Zhao Boqi, the supervisor who acts wisely, is also the director and CEO of Doushen Education. The article shows that Doushen Education believes that from an investment perspective, it is not recommended to only look at pure application or pure base models. Only products that are made from large models from the base model to the upper application are the most valuable products.
The article also mentioned that there are few companies of this type in China. The core reason is that teams with underlying model capabilities are extremely scarce, but teams with these capabilities are dedicated to building the underlying platform.
In addition, large model manufacturers are currently facing a dilemma similar to that faced by cloud vendors a few years ago. They hope that customers can use the models directly. However, customers have various problems during use and are difficult to solve quickly. The main reason is that there is no buffer zone in the combination of model and business, and industry-level processing capabilities are needed to do a good job in ToB business. To have this capability requires years of industry experience and relevant high-quality data, which is currently lacking in the industry. The cooperation between Zhipu and Doushen Education can exactly make up for this shortcoming, giving it more advantages than other model manufacturers in this field.
According to the above article, the two parties plan to export Jiuxiao Platform (or Jiuxiao Platform general derivative platform) services to university customers or education groups, and provide similar end-to-end content capabilities for customers with high-quality content output needs. This includes the GraphRAG 2.0 suite based on the Microsoft GraphRAG platform, which Doushen continues to upgrade and optimize. It can solve many of the business difficulties faced by the above customers in the application process of high-quality content generation, reduce risks and improve efficiency. In addition, Doushen AI’s upcoming multi-modal real-time video interactive learning function already uses the large model capabilities of the smart spectrum.
AI industry revenue accounts for no more than 4%
After the "double reduction", Doushen Education has been ups and downs in the field of education and training and has never left. In the era of transformation of all education companies, Doushen Education is also one of them. There are many new and old hot spots such as live streaming and quality art training, but it has not seen much results. Under financial pressure, as of the end of 2022, Doushen Education has become seriously insolvent.
In 2023, Doushen Education announced bankruptcy and reorganization.
In the early stage, Zhewen Internet (SH600986, stock price 5.38 yuan, market value 8.002 billion yuan) was deeply involved in the restructuring investment of Doushen Education. In this regard, Tang Ying, chairman and CEO of the group, said bluntly in an exclusive interview with a reporter from "Daily Economic News" on October 30 that the initial investment in Doushen Education was not only based on some cooperation between the two parties in marketing, but also more I took a fancy to the team's professionalism and sentiment, as well as its ideals for future education, especially its prospects in the integration of AI and education.
The investment results of Zhewen Internet are obvious: as of the close of trading on October 31, the share price of Doushen Education closed at 11.5 yuan/share, while the cost of Zhewen Internet’s initial participation in the reorganization of Doushen Education was only 1.5 yuan/share. The floating profit has exceeded 600 million yuan.
After the reorganization, the performance of Doushen Education has gradually returned to the right track. According to financial report data, in the first three quarters of this year, Doushen Education achieved operating income of 557 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 12.93%; net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 110 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 209.82%. As of the end of the third quarter of this year, the net cash flow generated by Doushen Education’s operating activities increased by 165.34% year-on-year. Due to repayment of debts of financial institutions, monetary funds held at the end of the period were 131 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 88.94%.
It is worth noting that the AI exploration that has brought a lot of capital to Doushen Education is still far from being realized.
On the evening of October 30, Doushen Education issued an announcement stating that the company disclosed on October 25, 2024 "About signing a strategic cooperation framework agreement and establishing a joint venture with Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology Co., Ltd. and Hainan Hezun Network Technology Co., Ltd. "Announcement", the joint venture company is mainly engaged in the research and development and sales of AI education products. At present, the joint venture company has not yet generated operating income, and there is a risk that the progress of related investments will not meet expectations. At the same time, in the first three quarters of 2024, the related revenue generated by Doushen Education’s AI education products will account for no more than 4% of operating revenue.
According to exclusive information obtained by reporters from the "Daily Economic News" from the industry, in addition to software, Doushen Education will also have a layout in hardware in the future. However, from the perspective of the industry, in order to build competitive barriers in the crowded education hardware market with stable leading players, Doushen Education, a new player, needs to deliver products that are significantly different from existing AI education hardware.