Artificial Intelligence (AI) has skyrocketed to the forefront of technological advancement, influencing our lives in profound ways. It is widely regarded as one of the most dynamic and transformative industries in recent years, often referred to as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” This emergence is not merely a passing trend; it represents a fundamental shift in how businesses operate, how consumers interact with products, and how information is processed and utilized across sectors.

Recent analysis by McKinsey reveals that the value generated from generative AI is predominantly harvested from areas such as marketing, operations, research and development, and software engineering. Remarkably, these sectors account for approximately 75% of the annual total value of generative AI applications.

One company making significant strides in this space is Minglue Technology, which recently filed for an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Known for its AI-driven marketing and operational solutions, Minglue has positioned itself as a leader in this increasingly competitive field.

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According to their prospectus, Minglue’s total revenue has grown impressively from 1.043 billion Chinese Yuan in 2021 to 1.462 billion Yuan in 2023. As of June 30, 2024, the company has provided services to 135 of the Fortune Global 500 companies, catering to a wide array of industries including retail, consumer products, food and beverage, automotive, electronics, cosmetics, and maternal and baby goods.

01

A New Era of Advertising Marketing Enabled by Generative AI

Amid the accelerated expansion of production capabilities, competition among brands has emerged as a crucial factor in modern enterprise success. The essence of this competition lies in capturing the consumer mindshare. Companies must not only focus on product quality and distribution channels but also on efficient and precise advertising strategies to effectively reach and resonate with their target audience.

With the rise of streaming platforms and digital media, the foundational logic of advertising has changed dramatically. In the past, centralized media like print and television dictated what audiences would see. However, the rapid growth of the Internet democratizes information dissemination, allowing anyone to become a channel. This decentralized landscape affords consumers a plethora of choices, leading to the harsh reality that advertisements not tailored to their preferences can easily be disregarded.

Hence, understanding consumer core needs and continuously iterating content to align with their preferences has become an imperative for businesses today.

Reflecting on the past decade, the mobile Internet era demonstrated mature solutions for user segmentation based on user persona characteristics. Tailoring marketing content according to these delineations has significantly enhanced brand marketing efficacy.

However, this approach primarily answers the question of what user needs are. Limitations in content production efficiency and precision made it challenging to create sufficiently rich personalized marketing content. As Minglue’s founder, Wu Minghui, aptly stated, “Without a plethora of diverse content to meet the diverse needs of consumers, generating effective marketing outcomes is difficult.” The advent of generative AI directly addresses this critical gap.

Minglue’s flagship marketing product, the MiaoZhen system, represents China’s first leading marketing intelligence application. This integrated platform optimizes media expenditures, manages social media, and fosters user growth, ensuring greater marketing efficacy across digital and outdoor channels. With its robust large-scale model adept at understanding consumer behavior and brand attributes, MiaoZhen has received widespread customer acknowledgment. By December 31, 2023, it reported a client renewal rate exceeding 90% and a contract win rate above 90%.

02

Redefining Offline Operations in Enterprises

For modern enterprises, traditional operational models face disruption in the wake of the AI revolution. Leveraging AI to cut costs while boosting efficiency is pivotal to achieving sustainable, high-quality growth.

This is particularly relevant for traditional brick-and-mortar stores, which serve as vital fronts for market expansion. Every aspect, from customer experience to operational efficiency to cost management and conversion rate optimization, demands a comprehensive AI-infused overhaul.

In response, Minglue Technology has developed an intelligent operational system specially designed for the cognitive retail store of the future. By employing IoT technology, data from physical stores is aggregated into a data platform and connected with the client’s proprietary systems. Through proprietary industry knowledge graphs and operations models based on industry data, Minglue has established an “intelligent operational brain” for these stores, utilizing various operational agents to support intelligent management.

Minglue's Smart AI empowers offline stores from three dimensions: the intersection of people, product, and place. First, it enhances stores’ understanding of customers and prospects to stimulate sales activities. Second, it streamlines procurement processes to improve supply chain efficiency. Third, it promotes intelligent product management, ensuring real-time monitoring and ultimately creating low-cost, high-stability retail environments.

Achieving these capabilities relies on Minglue's thorough assimilation and analysis of diverse data dimensions. Minglue can integrate more than 20 types of data sources, including video, traffic, routes, mobile activities, product distribution, environmental data, live streaming, audio playback, and conversation analysis, even encompassing device condition data such as temperature, humidity, energy consumption, operational indicators, and health metrics.

This multidimensional data landscape provides substantial training material for Minglue's operational models, enhancing the accuracy of support in store operations while garnering recognition from a plethora of restaurants and retail enterprises. By June 30, 2024, Minglue's operational intelligence products and solutions have been deployed in over 15,000 restaurants and more than 40,000 offline retail stores.

The extensive service network formed by the vast number of devices and stores, coupled with the accumulation of substantial operational data, allows Minglue to maintain a competitive edge in operational intelligence and build formidable barriers in terms of data and industry know-how.

According to Frost & Sullivan, Minglue ranked first in the Chinese operational intelligence application software market based on revenue earned in 2023.

03

Technical Edge as Core Competitive Advantage

Whether in marketing intelligence or operational intelligence, Minglue Technology exemplifies the application of AI technology across various business functions, all underpinned by its sophisticated large-scale model technology, which is central to enhancing various application scenarios.

General models often lack specialized training in specific vertical scenarios, providing only theoretical insights without practical, applicable knowledge. Vertical models, on the other hand, undergo "specialized training," enabling them to offer actionable solutions.

Drawing on 18 years of experience in marketing and operational intelligence, Minglue has accrued extensive multimodal data intelligence capabilities, giving it a unique advantage in developing large-scale models for marketing and operational applications, thus pioneering the concept of multimodal data intelligence. Frost & Sullivan reports that in 2023, Minglue became the first firm in China to implement intelligent social media content analysis and strategy generation based on a multimodal large language model (MLLM).

To address the growing demand for highly accurate understanding of advertising content, Minglue has been a front-runner in the Chinese data intelligent application software market with the launch of its Hypergraph Multimodal Large Language Model (HMLLM) and Hypergraph Retrieval-Augmented Generation (HRAG) technologies, which can integrate non-standard modalities such as EEG, eye-tracking signals, and interpret consumers' emotional reactions post-video exposure to gauge their interests. The work involving HMLLM received a best paper nomination at the globally renowned Association for Computing Machinery Multimedia Conference 2024 (ACM Multimedia 2024).

This alignment with practical enterprise requirements enables Minglue to cultivate a substantial and loyal customer base.

According to a Bain & Company report, retaining existing customers is 5 to 25 times less costly than acquiring new ones. A high retention rate among major clients effectively lowers customer acquisition costs. Furthermore, the endorsement from major clients often sets a benchmark in the industry, facilitating easier trust-building with prospective customers. Documentation shows Minglue’s major client retention rate climbed from 82.5% in 2021 to 93.1% in 2023.

Central to this is Minglue's technological strength, which serves as the main draw for repeat business from clients. By June 30, 2024, Minglue holds 2,057 patents and has filed 953 patent applications while securing over 400 domestic and international accolades. Additionally, Minglue is the only entity in China designated by the Ministry of Science and Technology to lead the establishment of the “National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Open Innovation Platform” in the realm of marketing intelligence, and it has garnered the “Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Science and Technology Award,” one of the most prestigious honors in China’s AI sector, symbolizing the pinnacle of recognition for advancements in artificial intelligence technology.

04

Conclusion

Driven by the surge of digitalization, AI technology is reshaping the landscapes of various industries at an unprecedented pace.

As AI technology continues to evolve and its applications expand, Minglue Technology stands out by providing comprehensive support ranging from marketing to operations, thanks to its formidable data processing capabilities and continuously enhancing model technology.

Whether through marketing or operational intelligence, the application of generative AI on the enterprise side has officially commenced. With 18 years of diligent engagement in artificial intelligence and big data, and leveraging large model technologies, industry-specific knowledge, and data accumulation, Minglue Technology is at the forefront of this transformative wave.