"Double reduction" a year later, Squirrel AI turned around hard to turn around

After the Mid -Autumn Festival, the reporter of the Economic Observation Network, the Squirrel AI officially disclosed the latest progress of the company's debt restructuring. A reporter from the Economic Observation Network learned on September 14 that the Squirrel AI established the debt and equity committee internally, which is mainly responsible for supervising, tracking, and cooperating with the company's debt reorganization. According to sorting out, Squirrel AI faces a total of more than 4,000 debtors from more than 900 million yuan. In the past year, Squirrel AI has returned more than 50 million yuan. The remaining part, Squirrel AI has signed a debt -to -equity agreement with 70%of them.

In early 2022, information about Squirrel AI fell into a financial crisis constantly appearing. At that time, a number of bank deposits of Squirrel AI were frozen, and many subsidiaries also encountered a different degree of freezing.

According to the official introduction of Squirrel AI, Squirrel AI is an artificial intelligence education brand that applies artificial intelligence adaptive learning technology in the field of K12 earlier in China. Its characteristic advantage is that students can detect thin and weak knowledge using squirrel AI intelligent adaptation systems. , And can split the knowledge points in the discipline. Before "double reduction", Squirrel AI was a company -oriented company, mainly providing adaptive learning system software services to offline education and training institutions.

Squirrel AI has experienced high -speed growth. Li Haoyang, chairman of Squirrel AI, introduced that the number of C -terminal users of SaaS products increased from more than 3,000 in the first quarter of 2018 to 240,000 in the fourth quarter of 2020, and in 2020, the pine squirrel AI realized it. Cash flow surplus is more than 20 million yuan.

In July 2021, the "double reduction" arrived. The operation of the education and training institutions stepped on the pause button. Partners who had paid the subscription fee and consulting service fee of the Squirrel AI to the Squirrel AI have become the creditors of the squirrel AI.

Li Haoyang revealed that since August 2021, the company has not developed any market development, and the B -end income has become 0, and a monthly fixed cost is 80 million yuan, resulting in cash consumption on the company's book very fast. "Basically, from then on, the entire company was close to the collapse, just like living in an ICU, I don't know if I can survive tomorrow." Li Haoyang said.

As a result, the Squirrel AI turned on the transformation, shifted from software service companies to "hard and hard -and -hard" companies, and shifted from B -end to the C -end. Li Haoyang said that at the time, he firmly took smart education and intelligent hardware as the future development direction.

In January of this year, Squirrel AI held an online conference to release a number of new smart hardware products, including smart learning machines and intellectual pens.

However, the competition among the educational intelligence hardware is very fierce, especially the learning machine hardware of Squirrel AI, in addition to the traditional BC high, reading, Youxue School and other learning machine manufacturers, as well as the Huawei, Xiaomi, Baidu, HKUST Xunfei and other people. For newcomers, there are also homework gangs and high -journey education at the same stage of transformation.

With intensified competition, corporate profitability has increased. Taking Reading Lang as an example, it not long ago, he disclosed the first financial report after listing. The financial report shows that the loss of RMB 42.388 million in the first half of 2022, with revenue decreased by 26.9%to 259.8 million yuan. Among them, the revenue of students' personal tablets accounted for 88.7%, and the revenue in 2022 was 230 million yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 23.1%.

In addition, it is worth noting that the hardware pricing of Squirrel AI is at a high level in the industry. It can be seen that the learning machines of different models of Squirrel AI are priced at 5999 yuan, 8599 yuan, and 9999 yuan, while HKUST Xunfei's learning machine is priced between 4,000 yuan. In addition, compared with the B -side business, the market launch and the competition of users will be more intense. Choose a crowded track such as smart hardware. What is the chance of squirrel AI?

In this regard, Li Haoyang pointed out that the learning machine launched by Squirrel AI mainly relies on the company's artificial intelligence adaptive learning system created by the company in the past seven years. Because this system is a real data collected during the whole teaching and full learning process, and combined with hardware products, it is easier to allow children to obtain thousands of people's effective teaching and cultivation in the educational scenario. Li Haoyang further pointed out that most of the learning machines on the market are functional phones, and in the field of AI learning machines, the track is actually not crowded. Among them, it is mainly represented by HKUST Xunfei. According to Li Haoyang, the Squirrel AI learning machine sold more than 40,000 units in the first half of the year, and terminal sales reached 300 million yuan.

In terms of channels, Squirrel AI introduced that the company's original partners have now become the company's dealers. This is the company's C -terminal channel. Dealers know more about local markets and local users. The cost of customer acquisition is relatively low. Basically, in each province and cities, Squirrel AI has its own channels.

The transformation of squirrel AI is in progress. Some observer in the industry pointed out that the descendants of the planned transformation must continue to improve in terms of hardware supply chain capabilities, software service capabilities, and after -sales service capabilities.

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