Perspective of Baidu’s investment in medical field in 2022： the most active Internet companies focus on AI medical care and equipment.

Science and technology innovation board Daily, December 15th (Reporter Chen Mei) In the field of medical investment, Baidu has become the most active CVC among Internet giants this year.The data shows that Baidu Venture Capital has shot 8 times, surpassing Tencent, which shot 5 times. Ali and Byte only invested in two companies in the medical field.

Continue to focus on investment strategies in the field of AI medical care and medical equipment.

This year, Baidu invested in 8 medical and health companies, including 4 developers of new drugs, 2 developers of ophthalmic medical equipment, and 2 developers of AI protein design platform and exocrine diagnostic reagents.

Specifically, in January, Enze Kangtai completed tens of millions of A+ rounds of financing. The company is an exocrine drug-carrying platform, which is the first order of Baidu Venture Capital in the medical field this year. In April, Baidu took a fancy to Morting Medical, an ophthalmic medical device company; After that, I went to the AI ​ ​ protein design platform to design the molecular heart, and AI predicted the target protein degradation new drugs … On the whole,Baidu has been focusing on the investment strategy of AI medical care and medical equipment in the medical field this year.

As far as medical equipment is concerned, this year Baidu focused on the developers of ophthalmic medical equipment. The science and technology innovation board Journal reporter noted that this field was widely concerned by institutions in 2021 and successfully ran out of IPO companies.

For ophthalmic equipment, an investor in the medical field told science and technology innovation board Daily that cataract, glaucoma, ametropia and other fields have always been one of the high-incidence diseases of ophthalmic diseases."For a long time, domestic high-end intraocular lenses have been monopolized by imported brands, so it is a trend and industry consensus to invest in high-end and alternative product pipeline companies.At the same time, in the field of optical scanning, there are also a wealth of ophthalmic testing equipment. "

According to this investor, with the development of technology, some new optometry equipment can improve the efficiency and accuracy of subjective and objective optometry. As for myopia treatment, it is a big market segment, and the related demand is also very clear.

Looking back this year, Baidu has made 27 shots and has been adding in the medical field, which can be seen from the number of investments. But as far as the investment amount is concerned, the automobile transportation field is a big investment. Although Baidu Venture Capital has only invested in three companies, namely Jidu Automobile, Grubo Technology and Yunchuang Zhixing, the investment amount has reached more than one billion RMB. Among them, Baidu Venture Capital and Geely Automobile jointly invested in Jidu Automobile in January, with an amount of 400 million US dollars.

An investor concerned about CVC investment told the science and technology innovation board Journal that Baidu’s investment in medical care is not new. "Under the existing investment logic, AI medical care and medical equipment are the focus of Baidu’s medical investment, and it also likes to invest in platform companies.From the field of equipment, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, chest, orthopedics and other specialties are highly dependent on equipment.Under the policy requirement of purchasing 100% domestic equipment, the targets in these fields are expected to become the targets of investment attention. "

Baidu venture capital these years …

Baidu’s venture capital team first shot in 2007, and has gradually flourished since then. Especially in 2017, the investment amount reached the highest, reaching 5.9 billion yuan.

Although Baidu Venture Capital is relatively active in the medical field this year, the investment amount and investment events are the lowest in the past six years. In this regard, an Internet giant war investor told the science and technology innovation board Journal reporter, "This is mainly the reason for reducing costs and increasing efficiency. For example, the investment department of Byte Lien Chan is gone. Instead, the investment is divided into various business departments, and the situation of each business department is different. "

On the other hand, as a big Internet company, Baidu has invested in so many projects, but its exit record is not satisfactory, far less than Xiaomi and Huawei. In terms of exit, M&A and IPO are the main exit methods of Baidu Venture Capital.Among them, there are 4 M&A companies, namely Hangzhou Express Distribution, Xinlun Optoelectronics, Yunbo Technology and Anjuke; There are three IPO companies, namely Youxin used car, Qunar. com and Jimi Technology.

Interestingly,In the main medical field, there has been no record of Baidu’s withdrawal.Neusoft Medical, the only company that has launched an impact on IPO, has a bumpy road to listing. This is a medical equipment company, and Baidu Online Network Technology ranks the ninth largest shareholder of Neusoft Medical with 1.0076% equity.

Since the beginning of this year, among the existing IPO companies, Baidu has repeatedly reduced its holdings of extreme rice technology. Up to now, it has reduced its holdings by 1,499,800 shares, accounting for 3% of the company’s total share capital.

The above-mentioned investors who are concerned about CVC investment told the science and technology innovation board Journal that Baidu Venture Capital mainly focuses on AI medical care and medical equipment in the medical field.On the one hand, Baidu is an Internet company, and its advantages in AI and big data, including its efforts in Internet medical care, are all based on platform attributes, making a fuss about internet plus. On the other hand, Internet medical care and AI medical care are also popular in recent years, which is considered to be surging.

"For example, on the application side, AI-assisted examination is relatively mature, and the application scenarios include: clinical assistant decision support, new drug research and development, genetic testing, surgical robots, medical imaging and so on. Among them, AI pharmaceutical is widely understood by the market. It can reduce the cost of drug research and development through algorithms, computing power and data, which can greatly promote the development of new drugs.However, AI Pharmaceutical faces a problem, and the easy-to-find new drug ingredients have been excavated by AI. Remaining or difficult to dig.. Generally speaking, AI medical care can promote accurate auxiliary diagnosis in clinic, especially in target therapy and genomics. "

As for the field of intelligent image diagnosis and equipment, the investor believes that although Internet giants have advantages in the AI field, they have limited information mining after image generation and processing. "In the application field, whether it is vascular intervention, cardiac imaging, or cell therapy, imaging diagnosis and equipment are needed. This is a shortcoming of giants, so investment is needed to make up for it."