Track Hyper | Lenovo's Full-Stack AI Engine Supports China's Economic Transformation

Author: Zhou Yuan / Wall Street News

Since the 18th National Congress in 2012 proposed the "innovation-driven development" strategy, and by September 2023, the development of "new quality productivity" has been elevated to a national strategic height, how to utilize global top technologies has become a key link in enhancing the economic body with new technologies.

On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT 3.5 launched an unexpected "attack," and GenAI (Generative Artificial Intelligence) became the hottest technology of the moment.

In 2024, GenAI technology is rapidly rebooting the world from multiple angles (as stated by Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA). Financial writer Wu Xiaobo also mentioned in his New Year's speech marking the end of the decade in 2024: "Artificial intelligence is reshaping the world at a weekly pace."

Throughout 2024, the multimodal and cross-modal applications of GenAI technology will expand comprehensively, with innovations such as Scaling Law generalization and Sora video generation technology emerging globally.

These point-like or linear new technologies require someone to step up, combine them with the current state of China's economic development, adapt to local conditions, and integrate them into a complete set of technology and application frameworks to form an efficient technological enhancement effect.

As a well-established technology giant with a 40-year history, Lenovo's speed in embracing GenAI technology is lightning-fast.

In 2023, Lenovo began promoting the implementation of the "3S strategy," which has been in place for four years, to build a GenAI technology system. In the released "AI PC Industry (China) White Paper," it clearly defined the five major characteristics of AI PCs for the first time.

On April 1, 2024, Lenovo officially proposed a systematic "full-stack AI" strategic layout; on June 26 of the same year, Lenovo showcased the "full-stack AI" strategic framework to the industry for the first time.

On June 12, according to IDC's "Q1 2024 China x86 Server Market Report," Lenovo Group jumped to the top three in China's server market, becoming the only vendor among the top five with a quarter-on-quarter sales growth, achieving a year-on-year increase of 200%, ranking first in growth rate and significantly ahead of the market average.

This also means that Lenovo's computing power infrastructure has strongly entered China's "first camp," reshaping the market landscape of China's computing power infrastructure.

At the end of the year, on November 28, Lenovo launched a one-stop IT service platform for small and medium-sized enterprises called "Lenovo Baiying Intelligent Agent."

Through a series of "point-surface combination" technology and service frameworks, Lenovo has thus formed a technological cornerstone for reconstructing China's economic development transformation from the ground up.

As the saying goes, great achievements are not always visible; the victories of skilled warriors are often unrecognized, lacking in fame and valor. A significant portion of major national instruments remains unknown to the public.

Most of the technical services of Lenovo's "full-stack AI" strategy are hidden beneath the surface, making it difficult for the public to directly perceive them. Therefore, the economic transformation technology engine built by Lenovo remains largely invisible over the long term.

A Brief Sketch of the Global Context of GenAI Technology

On December 30, 2024, Wu Xiaobo delivered a keynote speech titled "Foreseeing 2025, Finding the Engine of the New Cycle" in Xiamen Wu Xiaobo said that the first generation of "AI natives" is being born, and an AI computer can allow users to become "AI natives" ahead of others.

The AI computer mentioned here refers specifically to narrow GenAI technology. This is a new artificial intelligence technology that emerged after the OpenAI team launched the ChatGPT 3.5 application on November 30, 2022.

Since then, throughout 2024, various new GenAI technologies have emerged in many areas, including the business sector, with positive prospects.

The innovations in GenAI technology in 2024 are numerous, focusing on foundational technologies, industry applications, industrial development, and even including technological ethics.

However, in terms of entirely new technological forms, the GenAI technology of 2024 is merely an extension of that of 2023.

For example, multimodal interaction. After OpenAI launched the iterative version GPT-4 of Chat GPT-3.5 on March 14, 2023, it introduced a feature in September of the same year that allowed users to interact with ChatGPT through voice and text, marking the beginning of a new era of multimodal interaction.

From then on, AI could better understand and process various types of data, such as text, images, and voice.

By 2024, this iterative technology further developed into terminals capable of processing and understanding various types of data inputs, including text, images, audio, and data tables, and generating various types of outputs based on task requirements. It achieved understanding and interaction between different types of data through cross-modal conversion, breaking the limitations of single-modal interaction.

This technological path may seem complex, but it can actually be quite simple: terminals have gained the ability to understand user intentions. Although this is a very basic level of terminal intelligence, it is undoubtedly a significant step forward from the previous "intelligent disability" level.

Another important technology in 2023 was text-to-video technology. The Gen-2 model from the AI video startup Runway in Brooklyn (launched on March 20, 2023), along with Pika AI (launched by Pika Labs on November 29, 2023), allows users to generate videos based on text, changing the existing video styles and bringing new transformations to the field of video creation.

Among them, the Gen-2 model supports users to directly generate corresponding videos through text, images, or a combination of text and images, providing various styles of video processing and also enhancing the quality of static photos turned into dynamic videos, with a resolution of up to 4K.

Pika AI has similar functions to the Gen-2 model but offers several additional features. For example, the lipsync function launched on February 28, 2024, allows users to add voiceovers to videos; there are also a host of editing tools that significantly lower the application threshold for users.

These two technologies were iterated by OpenAI into the first text-to-video generation model Sora, released on February 16, 2024, and officially launched on December 10 of the same year.

Sora is more powerful than the aforementioned two GenAI video generation tools, primarily focusing on the ability of GenAI terminals to understand the physical properties and relationships between different elements in complex scenes, and can generate videos with dynamic camera movements, ensuring that characters and scene elements move consistently in three-dimensional space as the camera moves and rotates More importantly, Sora can simulate behaviors that influence the state of the world and artificial processes in the digital world to a certain extent, such as a painter leaving new brushstrokes on a canvas, and so on.

In 2024, many primary data ecosystems were formed, covering diverse information in the field of chip design, including code, specifications, register transfer level, simulation, etc., nurturing more precise and efficient models for GenAI applications.

Lenovo's Technological Iteration in 2024

The innovation or iteration of GenAI technology in 2024 is comprehensive and multidimensional, with intensive iterations in both software and hardware, including downstream applications, making it hard to summarize.

How can these numerous new technologies become the intrinsic driving force for China's economic transformation? How can they enhance the internal structure of China's economic development and serve the new quality productive forces?

In 2024, many domestic technology companies, like their global counterparts, launched a variety of related technologies and applications in their respective fields.

However, overall, there is still a lack of a system-level framework that can aggregate these innovative technologies, as well as integrated tools that can be directly "grafted" onto the real economy to enhance production efficiency at low cost, quickly, and effectively.

Wall Street Journal noted that as an established technology company with a 40-year history (founded in 1984), Lenovo embraced GenAI technology faster than lightning, and its ability to combine this technology with China's economic transformation is even harder to ignore.

On June 26, 2024, Liu Jun, Executive Vice President and President of Lenovo China, told Wall Street Journal, "Seven years ago, we proposed the vision of promoting intelligent transformation, and Lenovo aims to drive the intelligent transformation of Chinese enterprises and individuals. For the past seven years, we have been making technological preparations for this."

These technological preparations showcased one of their modules on December 7, 2023, shocking the industry's perception. On that day, Lenovo and IDC jointly released the industry's first "AI PC Industry (China) White Paper," clearly defining AI PCs.

Lenovo believes that AI PCs are a brand new technological product that will become personal AI exclusive assistants (Personal AI Twin) in the future; by April 1, 2024, Lenovo further clarified the definition of AI PCs: AI PCs will have five major characteristics.

On the following day (April 2, 2024), Liu Jun stated that through customer-centric transformation and 3S transformation, Lenovo China has built a direct business model for customers and promoted the implementation of the "full-stack AI" strategy.

On June 26 of the same year, Lenovo showcased the "full-stack AI" comprehensively. In this regard, Liu Jun said, "Now, we feel that we have the necessary capabilities in terms of technological reserves, product reserves, etc., and therefore we officially proposed the AI strategy."

Lenovo's ability to launch the "full-stack AI" strategy is closely related to the senior management's understanding of the development trends of this technology.

On October 15, 2024, Yang Yuanqing, Chairman and CEO of Lenovo Group, said in a speech in Seattle, "We believe that artificial intelligence is not a fleeting trend, nor is it an expanding bubble." Accordingly, Lenovo has positioned hybrid artificial intelligence as the future development direction of AI, including seamless and secure integration of private and public clouds, as well as personal and enterprise solutions.

At the same time, Lenovo announced the next phase of its Smarter AI for All vision and showcased a comprehensive portfolio of artificial intelligence solutions, services, and devices, bringing transformation and tangible investment returns to various industries and households worldwide.

To support this vision and goal, Lenovo simultaneously launched a series of innovative technologies and products, among which the most important module is the introduction of Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage for enterprises. Additionally, it includes the Lenovo AI Now and Lenovo Learning Zone (AI Learning) software platforms.

If one thinks that Lenovo's launch of such a large-scale innovative product is the end, it would underestimate Lenovo's determination to invest in GenAI technology.

On November 28, 2024, Lenovo launched a technology application platform for IT services aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises—Lenovo Baiying Intelligent Agent.

As the industry's first enterprise-level IT service intelligent agent, Lenovo Baiying Intelligent Agent possesses five technical capabilities: multimodal interaction, visual thinking chains, multi-scenario game theory, multi-agent collaboration, and full-link security, building the first entry point for small and medium-sized enterprises to embrace GenAI.

These new software and hardware products constitute the technical material conditions for achieving Lenovo's vision of "Smarter AI for All," and the guiding ideology of this vision stems from Liu Jun's statement on June 26, 2024, that "Lenovo aims to promote the intelligent transformation of Chinese enterprises and individuals."

It is evident that Lenovo is not merely jumping on the GenAI technology bandwagon.

Lenovo's true goal is to combine it with the current state of China's economic development, fundamentally "reconstructing" the internal driving force of China's economic transformation with GenAI technology, and genuinely promoting the realization of the national strategic goal of new quality productivity.

How to Support China's Economic Transformation?

Why does Lenovo's "full-stack AI" strategy have the function of aiding economic development transformation? This requires analyzing the internal structure of this strategy.

On April 1, 2024, Lenovo officially proposed the "full-stack AI" strategic layout. "Full-stack AI" will accelerate Lenovo's 3S transformation in China.

The 3S includes smart devices (SD), smart infrastructure (SI), and solutions and services (SS), which belong to Lenovo's IDG, ISG, and SSG business segments, respectively. In terms of smart devices, the "full-stack AI" supports the "one body, multiple ends" approach.

In the "one body, multiple ends," AI PCs are the core terminals. The AI PC referred to by Lenovo is essentially a PC equipped with a personal AI intelligent agent.

The AI PC with a personal AI intelligent agent continues to expand its application scenarios.

For example, the "Personal Document Master" can quickly summarize PPT and Word documents, translate English materials, and polish articles, helping users easily tackle work, study, and creative challenges.

The "Personal Knowledge Q&A" has the capability to quickly organize knowledge and data from different fields and build a personal knowledge base combined with local documents, providing precise answers; at the same time, the way users acquire knowledge is continuously optimized "AI device optimization" can achieve intelligent analysis of device performance and usage, providing users with optimization and energy management solutions, allowing users to enjoy a lasting efficient experience.

According to Liu Jun, the Qingtian Engine can help enterprises save at least 18 months and tens of millions of dollars in time and cost.

The reason Lenovo's "full-stack AI" strategy can provide technological support for China's economic transformation, in addition to the aforementioned technological content, is a more critical module: the ecological support system.

The commercial value of these ecosystems comes from Lenovo's integration of global top technological forces, such as NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Meta, and Qualcomm. By integrating global technologies, Lenovo's "full-stack AI" strategy can more effectively serve China's economic transformation.

A Mu told Wall Street Insight, "Relying on full-stack AI, Lenovo is committed to developing the Tianxi, Wanquan, and Qingtian ecosystems." These three ecosystems correspond to the business layout of "one body with multiple ends," "one horizontal and five verticals," and "one engine with three arrows."

What is the "Baiying Intelligent Agent"? This is a type of "enterprise intelligent agent" empowered by Qingtian 3.0, aimed at addressing various needs of SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses).

According to Wang Liping, Vice President of Lenovo Group and General Manager of the China Government and Enterprise Business Group, "Many SMBs do not know how to build IT business systems, so we created the 'Baiying Intelligent Agent' solution to provide enterprises with intelligent agent deployment and also complete intelligent infrastructure construction."

The actual functions of Lenovo's Baiying Intelligent Agent are all To B, such as marketing scenarios powered by GenAI, which can simplify marketing processes, improve customer acquisition efficiency, and significantly enhance customer conversion rates through intelligent customer tracking, precise customer acquisition, and user circle selection functions.

In office scenarios with built-in GenAI technology, Lenovo's Baiying Intelligent Agent supports multimodal interactions, including voice, text, and images, creating an immersive human-machine collaborative work environment that significantly enhances employee communication and collaboration efficiency; in terms of AI services, it can provide multiple advanced functions, such as AI image diagnosis, deep reasoning, and precise positioning, which can quickly solve technical problems, improve fault diagnosis speed and accuracy, and significantly reduce operational and maintenance costs.

To observe the effect of Lenovo's GenAI technology enabling China's economic growth transformation, one can look at the market performance of Lenovo's "second growth curve": the greater the increase of this curve, the stronger the support of Lenovo's "full-stack AI" strategy for the body of China's economy—Chinese enterprises—indicating higher value and better results.

However, even so, since Lenovo's "full-stack AI" strategy mainly focuses on enabling the B-end, the role of Lenovo's economic transformation strategy as an engine support remains behind the scenes and is difficult to be widely recognized