Shanghai's innovation center fuels AI large model development

The SMC Shanghai Foundation Model Innovation Center stands as one of China's first dedicated incubators and accelerators for large-scale AI models.
[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

According to the center's executive, the SMC Shanghai Foundation Model Innovation Center is catalyzing the rapid advancement of the artificial intelligence large model industry leveraging Shanghai's AI prowess.

Officially unveiled in 2023, SMC stands as one of China's first dedicated incubators and accelerators for large-scale AI models. It aims to fortify Shanghai's pursuit of establishing a world-class, globally competitive AI industry cluster.

"Shanghai is an outward-facing market boasting abundant resources and a conducive market environment, granting it distinct competitive advantages in the internet and AI sectors," said Chen Haici, general manager of SMC.

To solidify the foundation for resident enterprises, SMC has established five major functional platforms on computing power dispatching, open data, evaluation service, financial service, and comprehensive service, supporting companies in terms of text corpus and computer resources, investment funds, and filling guidance.

It also extends top-priority policy support to accelerate the world premieres of various small vertical scenario models across consumer, entertainment, finance, and other major application domains, expediting large model innovations' integration into diverse industries.

"We not only offer sufficient computing power resources, but also assist enterprises in managing, allocating, and optimizing their computing power usage through the computing power dispatching platform," Chen said.

The Shanghai government is mobilizing social computing power resources to support large model enterprises, as it allocated dedicated fiscal funds for computing power support, and the Xuhui district has also formulated relevant supporting policies, according to Chen.