Ma Yunxuan built the Institute of Bodhidharma, and why he did not want to spend a penny to build a car

A few days ago, the annual Alibaba "Reality Show of the Year" - Yunqi Conference opened. It was obsessed with Jin Yong's novels and was known as the company's famous player Ma Yun. It also sent a "great move" to thousands of media. It announced that in the next three years, Alibaba will spend hundreds of billions to build a new organization, the “Dharma House”, which “lives longer than Alibaba”.

For the original intention of establishing the Bodhidharma, Ma Yun hopes that it will become China’s and even the world’s assets and heritage, not just the Alibaba system. Ma Yun hopes that from now on, Dharma can live longer than Alibaba. If Alibaba still has 84 years (102 years -18 years old), Dharma will have to live for at least 85 years.

In the era of BAT oligarchs on the Chinese Internet, Ma Dashuai, who has always been not a technology bluff, apparently hoped not only to sell the slogan, but to tap into a leading position of forward-looking technology through 100 billion gold.

From its planning perspective, the 100 billion investment covers a variety of industrial fields such as machine intelligence, intelligent networking, and financial technology, including quantum computing, machine learning, basic algorithms, network security, visual computing, natural language processing, next-generation human-computer interaction, Chip technology, sensor technology, embedded systems, etc.

"I really don't understand technology. I didn't feel like I didn't understand it. I didn't understand it because I didn't understand it. I didn't understand technology. I didn't understand technology. I didn't understand technology. I really didn't understand technology, but we respect technology. We appreciate technology. We believe in technology." When Ma Yun took part in the speech, he expressed his unconcealed expression of love for technology.

And when the outside world was shocked by the richness of Alibaba, a problem surfaced immediately. Why is Ma Yun and Alibaba still "calm" in front of this huge opportunity when the new forces of building a car are coming and going? In hundreds of new faces, why did Ma Yun not want to be their “gold master”?

In recent years, the richest circles in China have been selling electric vehicles. Tencent Ma Huateng, who belongs to BAT, not only became the fifth largest shareholder of Tesla, but also was one of the main investors of Weilai Motor.

The well-known rich man Li Ka-shing is even more fond of making cars. The biggest gold owner behind the Changjiang Motors, which has obtained qualification for new energy vehicles, is the richest Chinese.

According to the media inventory, Li Ka-shing has already begun to deploy electric vehicles as early as 2010. It acquired 400 million shares of Wulong electric vehicles at a price of HK$0.73/share; on June 3, 2015, Li Ka-shing added another price of 0.46 Hong Kong dollars/share. The acquisition of 743 million shares of Wulong electric vehicle shares cost HK$342 million. At the same time, in 2013, Wulong Electric Vehicle injected RMB 5.1 billion into Changjiang Auto, marking Li Ka-shing's “turning into the main” Yangtze River electric vehicle.

However, Ma Yun and Alibaba have always been indifferent to the construction of the car. Is it because the funds are stretched?

As we all know, the automobile industry chain is long and complex, and the period of building a car is long. It takes a huge amount of money to be spent. To subvert a century-old traditional automobile company, it is a high threshold business that needs to burn tens of billions of dollars.

Take Tesla as an example. In the past five years, it issued shares or convertible bonds at least seven times. The latest financing was in August this year, Tesla announced plans to issue $ 1.5 billion of eight-year bonds to raise funds. Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, a member of the new vehicle manufacturer in the Chinese market, once stated that there is no 20 billion yuan and no one wants to build a car.

But this obviously cannot be a reason to hinder Ma Yun from having a car dream. There is no lack of ideal Ma is also lacking precisely the money.

According to the latest financial report issued by Alibaba in fiscal year 2018, as of June 30, 2017, the total cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments held by Alibaba Group amounted to RMB 148.152 billion (USD 21.854 billion). According to Mergermaket’s report, Alibaba’s total M&A investment reached US$41.9 billion in the past five years, of which only US$13.5 billion was invested last year.

Therefore, for wealthy Ma Yun, creating a brand new brand can be said to be "minutes".

"Not bad money," Ma does not build an electric car, has its own logic. First of all, although Ma Yun will not single-handedly build an electric car brand, this does not prevent him from creating a “trip empire”. The various scenes covering all aspects of food, clothing, housing, and transportation are the starting point of business for all Internet giants, and Ma Yun can't be “exempt.”

Ma Yun has a very large travel pattern. In April 2013, Alibaba.com invested fast. In 2015, Quick and another giant who shared the trip staged a "major merger of the century," according to Reuters, September 2016. The estimated value of the drops was 33.8 billion U.S. dollars (approximately 225.9 billion U.S. dollars).

In terms of logistics, Ma Yun is also generous. In 2010, Alibaba acquired BES Huitong; in December 2013, it invested 2.2 billion yuan to invest in Haier's expansion of logistics; in 2014, it reached a strategic cooperation with China Post; in 2015, it invested in Yuantong, which accounted for 20% of the shares; and invested 2.15 billion in investment in Cainiao Logistics, accounting for 43% of the shares. .

Recently, even the “unmanned gas station” was launched. According to the plan of Alibaba Smart Gas Station, it will be completed in two stages. The 1.0 version will be built in October 2017, mainly based on the traditional gas station. Transformation. In 2018, the fully automated 2.0 version of license plates, vehicle owners, automatic identification of oil products, automatic debit payments and refueling links will be realized.

Although there is no separate brand for electric vehicles, Alibaba is also involved in the automobile manufacturing sector. YunOS, the smart operating system of Alibaba Group, has taken over the automotive sector.

In July 2016, Alibaba Group and SAIC Group released the first mass production Internet, and the Roewe RX5 was launched with the YunOS smart operating system. For more than a year, the Roewe RX5 has been a blockbuster and has quickly become a hot model in the automotive market. From January to September this year, cumulative sales have reached 164,000 units, breaking through 20,000 vehicles for several months, and reaching a total of 25,066 units in September.

It can be said that Ma Yun built a travel scene around the car category. It is worth noting that at the Yunqi conference last year, it launched a “Hangzhou Brain” urban traffic solution based on traffic AI applications. The first scenario development of the “City Brain” in Hangzhou focused on solving traffic congestion problems. After one year of operation, the effect was obvious.

Ma Yun said with excitement: "The last century's enterprises to seize one or two opportunities, can become a great business, the 21st century companies to achieve greatness must solve the great problem." Take the city's brain as an example, through the technical solution The actual problem, through the technical output of Alibaba Cloud and Dharma, is becoming the direction of Alibaba's iteration.

Obviously, if the new energy car is the "fish" in the future travel, Ma Yun expects to create rivers and ponds. In the view of Ma Yun and Alibaba, the future of new energy vehicles is the terminal for intelligent travel, and Alibaba wants to create a central nervous system and brain. This may also be why Ma Yun is not willing to pay for the creation of electric cars.