iFLYTEK and Subsidiary Xunfei Healthcare to Establish International HQ at Cyberport

iFLYTEK and Xunfei Healthcare plan to invest HK$400 million in Hong Kong over the next five years to establish international headquarters, including an international business headquarters, an international Research and Development (R&D) centre, an international trade and capital management platform, as well as a 150-member team to drive R&D and overseas market expansion, to establish an AI ecosystem with tens of thousands of developers.

The R&D projects include the in-depth development of intelligent speech and building large models, and AI infrastructure that covers intelligent education, intelligent speech technologies in Cantonese, data processing training, etc., thereby empowering Hong Kong’s AI industry ecosystem. Meanwhile, Xunfei Healthcare will set up an international research institute at Cyberport focusing on cutting-edge technology research that integrates medical health and AI.

Prof. Sun Dong, Secretary for Innovation,Technology, and Industry stated: “The HKSAR Government has been actively supporting the development of innovation and technology in Hong Kong, focusing on AI and life and health technologies as technology industries with an edge to develop. iFLYTEK and Xunfei Healthcare are exemplary leaders in these two important fields. iFLYTEK is establishing its presence in Hong Kong by setting up its international headquarters, which includes an international R&D centre, an international business headquarters, and an international trade and capital management platform. Additionally, Xunfei Healthcare will establish an international research institute at Cyberport. Their presence will contribute to the development of Hong Kong’s AI industry ecosystem. AI is a very important industry development direction for Hong Kong. Currently, Hong Kong has gathered a large number of leading enterprises locally and from overseas, as well as hundreds of outstanding AI companies, forming an AI ecosystem in Hong Kong.”

Simon Chan, Chairman of Cyberport, said, “The AI ecosystem that Cyberport is focusing on developing has become the engine for the development of the related industry. The first phase of the AI Supercomputing Centre facilities will be put into service within the year, enhancing Hong Kong’s fundamental R&D capabilities. At the same time, Cyberport has already housed 200 companies focusing on R&D, application, and infrastructure in AI and data science, linking up a vast partner network to drive AI innovation and industry development. With their established Xunfei Healthcare presence at Cyberport, iFLYTEK and Xunfei Healthcare can leverage their comprehensive advantages in AI to upgrade the structure of Cyberport’s AI ecosystem in all aspects, helping to drive innovative R&D, results transformation, and industrialisation of AI in the city. This will not only ignite the potential of AI’s diverse applications to fuel the development of the digital economy and smart city but also set a benchmark to attract more leading AI companies from the Mainland and overseas to Hong Kong. Cyberport will continue to work hard to introduce more flagship I&T companies through various programmes, strengthening the city’s advantages in innovative R&D and internationalisation, and helping Hong Kong move towards its vision of becoming an international I&T hub.”

Qingfeng Liu, Chairman of iFLYTEK delivered a speech via video, “Since its founding, iFLYTEK has consistently prioritised fundamental technological innovation, achieving international leadership in key areas such as multilingual intelligent speech technologies, automated speech transcription, and translation machine. For the first time in the industry, our machine speech synthesis could produce voice output with higher quality than ordinary human speakers, our automated speech transcription outperformed human stenographers, and our translation machine passed the China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters (CATTI) Level II for Chinese-English interpreting. Amid the current wave of general AI driven by advanced cognitive models, iFLYTEK released its SparkDesk Version 4.0 (iFLYTEK Spark 4.0), which, trained on Feixing-1, boasts comparable foundational capabilities with ChatGPT-4 Turbo (April 2024 version). Additionally, we lead the industry in large speech models, image-text models, and specialised models for medical and educational applications. The strong support from the Hong Kong government for technological innovation and talent recruitment is a key reason we have chosen Hong Kong as the international hub for iFLYTEK. We look forward to deepening our cooperation with various sectors in Hong Kong to jointly advance the prosperity of the AI industry.”

Dawei Duan, Senior Vice President of iFLYTEK, said, “We are grateful to the HKSAR government’s comprehensive support, especially to the Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau in facilitating the landing of iFLYTEK and Xunfei Healthcare, bolstering our confidence in developing our presence in Hong Kong and utilizing it as a strategic base for our international expansion. The timing of our establishment in Hong Kong’s Cyberport aligns fortuitously with the successful conclusion of the Third Plenary Session of the 20^th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. This pivotal meeting has outlined a clear direction and provided significant policy momentum for further reform and modernization in China. We maintain strong confidence in China’s economic and social development trajectory and hold high expectations for Hong Kong’s distinctive role in advancing the grand endeavour of Chinese-style modernisation. At iFLYTEK, our unwavering mission is to ‘shape a brighter future with AI.’ We are committed to accelerating our research and development initiatives, fostering both international and domestic collaborations, and leveraging AI best practices to address pressing societal needs. Our goal is to realize the principle of ‘Tech for Social Good’ by applying innovative solutions to real-world challenges.”