Investment In Hard Science And Technology Encounter Difficulties In Technology Adjustment

        With more and more venture capital institutions focusing on investment opportunities of hard technology enterprises such as artificial intelligence, biomedicine, new materials, environmental protection and new energy, chip research and development, how to do a good job in technology due diligence has become a new challenge for them.

        Many venture capital institutions disclosed to reporters that many start-ups in biomedicine, new materials, environmental protection and new energy, chip R & D and other industries will "flaunt" their own technology research and development as the forefront of the industry in the due diligence process of venture capital institutions, and have applied for a large number of patent technologies with good quality. However, they often have no idea whether these words are worthy of the name.

"In the past, we mainly relied on the industry investment experience of fund partners and the communication with upstream and downstream enterprises of the industry to conduct cross validation to find out whether the science and technology innovation enterprises to be invested have the technology R & D advantages as they said. However, in the actual investment process, personal experience judgment or misjudgment of upstream and downstream enterprises in the industry may also make us make decision mistakes." A partner of a large domestic venture capital organization told reporters.

In an exclusive interview with our reporter, pat snap co-founder Guan Dian said that how to do a good job in technology due diligence is becoming a big new test for venture capital institutions and bank investment and loan linkage departments.

"Recently, many of our venture capital shareholders will also come to us and ask us to provide patent technology information of some enterprises, so as to judge whether their technology R & D ability leads the industry, as an important basis for their equity investment decisions," Guan told reporters. Taking the biomedical field as an example, although since the outbreak of the epidemic, it has been increasingly sought after by the linkage departments of venture capital and bank investment and loan, but the latter is well aware that the R & D investment of biomedicine is huge, and it is not easy to find high-quality enterprises in the industry to improve the success rate of investment.

According to the data obtained by the reporter, in the past 10 years, the global biomedical industry has shown a new trend of continuously increasing R & D costs and decreasing R & D returns. According to the data, the total R & D expenditure of the top five biomedical companies in the world will reach 51 billion US dollars in 2020, and the average cost of new drug R & D will increase from 1 billion US dollars 10 years ago to 4.4 billion US dollars. However, in sharp contrast, the R & D return rate of biomedical enterprises will drop from 10.1% 10 years ago to 1.8%.

"It is not only a challenge but also a business opportunity for venture capital institutions and bank investment and loan linkage departments to help them understand more comprehensively and accurately the technological research and development capabilities of biomedical start-ups to invest in, and further improve the accuracy of investment decisions," Guan told reporters. After obtaining $300 million e-round equity financing from Tencent and Softbank vision fund phase II in March, smart bud set out to build a knowledge mapping system for biomedicine, new materials and other industries. On the one hand, it continued to enable venture capital institutions and bank investment and loan linkage departments to select excellent enterprises to carry out equity investment and credit support, On the one hand, it helps the government industrial parks in many places to enhance the integrity and synergy of industrial chain and create stronger industrial agglomeration effect to promote the high-quality development of local economic transformation.

According to the data, smart bud is a SaaS (software as a service) service provider of scientific and technological innovation information, focusing on the two major parts of scientific and technological innovation information and intellectual property information service. Through artificial intelligence technologies such as machine learning, computer vision and natural language processing (NLP), zhihuiya is a leading technology company, University and scientific research institution in the world Financial institutions provide big data intelligence services. In March this year, patsnap announced the completion of $300 million of round e equity financing, the largest equity financing in SaaS since 2020.

The partners of the above-mentioned large domestic venture capital institutions told reporters that it is not easy to establish a knowledge mapping system of the biomedical industry. Before that, they had paid for the purchase of several biomedical industry patent database data, but found that these patent database data not only have old retrieval methods, the retrieval process is quite complex, the feedback speed is slow, and the data quality is not good enough, which greatly affects the accuracy and comprehensiveness of their technology due diligence.

"During this period, we have been trying to use the biomedical industry patent database provided by a third-party professional service agency for a period of time, but the feedback period of relevant retrieval needs is long, and many biomedical enterprises are reluctant to fully display their patent data due to their concerns about information security, which also leads to the unsatisfactory effect of technology due diligence," he pointed out.

Guan Dian told reporters that in view of these pain points, smart bud, with its rich and comprehensive intellectual property data reserve in the past, supplemented by advanced artificial intelligence technology, excavates a large number of hidden biomedical enterprise entities and their relationships from public information such as papers, patents, news, clinical trials, investment and financing, and transforms the extracted information into searchable, display, and information The shared knowledge base enables venture capital institutions, bank investment and loan linkage departments, and industrial parks to have a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the actual technological R & D capabilities and scientific and technological innovation achievements transformation strength of relevant biomedical enterprises.

"Around the knowledge base building in the field of biomedicine, we have formed a closed loop of biomedical information database chemical structure database biological sequence database," she told reporters. In summary, the biomedical database mainly covers global innovative drug data, which helps venture capital institutions and bank investment and loan linkage departments to quickly mine high-quality early research projects, discover investment opportunities and identify industry competition risks; Biological sequence database and chemical structure database can not only help Biopharmaceutical Enterprises query the public information of similar biotechnological sequences in patents, literatures and biological public databases, effectively improve the accuracy of biomedical chemical small molecule drugs and R & D innovation, but also help venture capital institutions understand whether there is litigation risk in the patent and technology R & D capability of the enterprises to be invested, Avoid potential investment risks.

"In fact, there are very high barriers to entry for this job," she said bluntly. First of all, smart bud needs to mine the relevant operating entities, drug research and development direction, disease treatment research direction and other information one by one to form a complete enterprise knowledge map; Secondly, smart bud also needs to "extract" all kinds of patent technology and early clinical test results of biomedical enterprises and other published journal paper data, and "connect" the two groups of previously disconnected data, so that venture capital institutions and bank investment and loan linkage departments can fully grasp the actual technological R & D advantages and the latest progress of scientific research achievements transformation of biomedical enterprises.

Fortunately, thanks to the financial support and resource empowerment of many venture capital shareholders, smart bud has improved the ability of data collection, mining and analysis through continuous iterative upgrading of artificial intelligence, and the knowledge mapping system of biomedical industry has become increasingly perfect.

"Nowadays, through this knowledge mapping system, many bank investment and loan linkage departments and venture capital institutions can quickly and comprehensively understand whether the technological layout and technological R & D strength of biomedical enterprises are consistent with what entrepreneurs have said, whether technological research and development capabilities are in the forefront of the industry, whether technological patents have greater market influence and economic value, and the latest progress of scientific research achievements transformation Interest, and then give customized investment and loan linkage program, "Guan Dian said. At the same time, many Biopharmaceutical Enterprises are also actively using this knowledge mapping system. On the one hand, they can understand the latest research achievements of the industry as an important basis for improving their research and development efficiency of new drugs. On the other hand, through horizontal comparison, they can actively show their technical advantages to venture capital institutions and bank investment and loan linkage departments, and strive for more considerable financial support.

It is worth noting that this knowledge mapping system of biomedical industry is also "welcomed" by many government industrial parks. The reason for this is that many local biomedical industrial parks are also facing many challenges. First, many places lack sufficient data to quickly sort out and inventory the scientific and technological innovation resources of local biomedical enterprises, so as to make up for the deficiencies and shape a more complete industrial chain. Second, they lack sufficient and comprehensive enterprise patent data, Therefore, based on the characteristics of local biomedical industry technology research and development, we will carry out industrial planning, attract more venture capital institutions to invest, and promote the vigorous development of local biomedical industry; Third, they lack sufficient data and evaluation model to conduct a comprehensive evaluation on the enterprises to be invited to invest, so as to ensure that the enterprises introduced can effectively solve the development bottleneck of the local biomedical industry chain.

At present, with its powerful ability to obtain and analyze intellectual property data in the field of biomedicine, smart bud can carry out comprehensive statistics on the upstream and downstream status of the biomedical industry chain, and "create" one industry map around the production and processing of upstream biomedical raw materials and the downstream biomedical circulation and application, Meanwhile, thousands of Biopharmaceutical Enterprises in many industrial parks are included in the industrial map, which makes it easier for the biomedical industrial parks in various regions to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their own biomedical industry chain, so as to formulate corresponding measures to make up for the deficiencies, attract enterprises to settle in and fill in the weak links of their own industrial chain through local guiding fund investment and optimizing business environment, Promote the development of local biomedical industry chain.

A local government industrial park official told the reporter that the more complete the biomedical industry chain in the local industrial park, the more attractive it would be for venture capital institutions to invest in the park, because venture capital believed that the increasingly perfect industrial chain could greatly stimulate the iterative upgrading of biomedical R & D technology and the change of business model, so as to further improve the success rate of project investment.

"In the future, we also intend to expand the knowledge mapping system based on intellectual property + artificial intelligence technology from biomedical and new material industries to AI intelligence, environmental protection and new energy, new information technology, Semiconductor R & D and other fields. Through vertical layout in these industries, we will help venture capital institutions and bank investment and loan linkage departments to improve their investment pace and investment decisions in these emerging industries The accuracy of the policy also helps local government industrial parks to carry out industrial planning more effectively and drive the local economic transformation and high-quality development, "Guan told reporters. In fact, AI intelligence, environmental protection, new energy, new information technology, Semiconductor R & D and other fields are similar to those of biomedicine. They all have the characteristics of fast technology iteration and upgrading, long R & D cycle, increasingly frequent intellectual property litigation, strong demand for intellectual property risk control, and increasingly difficult prediction of future development of technology The bank investment and loan linkage department can comprehensively grasp the latest trend of industry technology research and development and whether enterprise technology R & D advantages can continue to lead the industry, so as to improve its project investment success rate.

      The reporter has learned from many aspects that many leading large enterprises in the industry are starting to find start-ups with complementary technology effect and cutting-edge scientific research achievements for merger and integration through the above knowledge mapping system, as a measure to consolidate their own technological research and development advantages.

"Recently, a large domestic display R & D and manufacturing enterprise has been using the knowledge mapping system to seek forward-looking scientific research results for cooperation. If the start-up enterprises / laboratories with these research technologies have acquisition and integration value, they will start the acquisition negotiation process soon after completing the technology due diligence assessment using the knowledge mapping system." A smart bud person told reporters.