The 20th China International Financial Forum was held in Shanghai on December 14-15, 2023. Shirley Chen, Founding Partner and Chairwoman of Youshan Capital, attended and delivered a speech.


Shirley said that Youshan Capital focuses on investments in AI, advanced manufacturing and healthcare, with 20% capital in Youshan Fund I invested in the AI-related companies.

She mentioned that the rise in the U.S. stock market this year was driven by AI and the magnificent seven stocks with AI themes in the U.S. stock market account for about 30% of the S&P 500 index, setting a historical high and boosting confidence in the AI. This year, under the leadership of large language models, artificial intelligence's generalization capabilities have made unexpected progress, raising expectations for the accelerated realization of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

She is confident in the development of China's AI industry. First of all, the foundation for AI development is innovation in theory and technology. Secondly, there must be the capability for industrial design and large-scale production to effectively productize technology, in which China both excels, therefore creating a positive cycle. The AI industry can be divided into three levels: computing power, models, and applications, with the greatest investment opportunities lying in the applications. In particular, the open-source nature of foundation models greatly promotes the prosperity of the applications.

She believes that this AI wave has ushered in the "big model era" for the global financial industry. Since April, there has been an increasing number of big model releases in the financial domain. Big models can empower a wide range of scenarios in the financial industry, both front, middle, and back offices, bringing many new applications to retail finance, corporate finance, insurance, securities, asset management, and other industries. The Chinese financial industry is very proactive in embracing this wave on the demand side. For example, nine banks including ICBC, ABC, and BOC have clearly stated in their semi-annual reports that they are exploring the application of big models.

Financial industry has always been one of the industries with the most abundant IT budgets. Over the past decade, entrepreneurs in business services and AI have devoted good efforts to serving clients in the financial industry. As a result, financial industry has always been at the forefront of digital transformation. AI empowerment would take two directions, one is the upgrade of old scenarios, and the other is the transformation of new scenarios.

The empowerment of large models is first reflected in their ability to improve the efficiency of the existing digital foundation in the financial industry. Relying on major capabilities including mathematical reasoning, text generation, etc., the customer experience in many existing scenarios can be effectively enhanced. For example, the experience in eight scenarios such as intelligent outbound call, digital employees, risk management, investment decision-making, industry research, smart contracts, knowledge management, and customer relationship maintenance can all become more automated and intelligent.

Shirley also expressed that both generative AI and financial industry have a strong regulatory nature and major economies around the world are rapidly improving the regulation of generative AI. As investors, it is important to closely monitor the progress of the regulatory framework construction and to invest in AI enterprises that provide positive value to society.