VIETNAM AI LANDSCAPE

REPORT 2018
Published by rubikAI
www.rubikAI.com
INTRODUCTION
With the market of 96-million population, high internet
and mobile penetration rate, stable economic growth
and a strong tech talent base, Vietnam is poised to
become the next tech hub of Asia.
One of the main drivers for the tech scene in Vietnam is
the emergence of frontier technologies: AI, IoT, Block-
chain…
Aiming to become one of the leaders in the AI ecosys-
tem in Vietnam, rubikAI publishes Vietnam AI Land-
scape Report 2018.
The objectives of the report is to bring an overview of AI
technology, global AI landscape and AI ecosystem in
Vietnam including players in the ecosystem and the
state of AI companies in Vietnam.
To bring an in-depth view of AI ecosystem in Vietnam,
we surveyed more than 30 domestic AI companies
about their activities, the challenges and their opinion
of the AI ecosystem, including both AI startups and cor-
porates building AI-related products.
1
 OUTLINE

01 02 03
A brief overview of Global Vietnam
Artificial Intelligence AI Landscape AI Ecosystem

2
 01
A BRIEF
OVERVIEW OF
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE

2
3
 AI is typically defined as the ability of a machine
to perform cognitive functions we associate with

AI is
human minds, such as perceiving, reasoning,
learning, interacting with the environment,
problem solving, and even exercising creativity.
a broad -Mckinsey&Company

concept
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
A program that can sense, reason, act,
and adapt

MACHINE
LEARNING
Algorithms whose performance
improve they are exposed to more
data over time

DEEP
LEARNING
Subset of machine
learning in which
multilayered neural
networks learn from vast
amounts of data

4
 AI is not
a new concept
but the revolution Rossum’s Dartmouth

has just begun Universal Robots Turing Test Conference

1920 1950 1955

AI was first mentioned as a An AI big step was made by

mere concept in a theater IBM with Deep Blue, an AI The First
Expert The first Robot in GM
play called Rossum’s Univer- capable of beating a world
System AI Winter assembly line
sal Robots (1929). The idea of champion in chess. More
what AI is came with the recently, advancement in algo- 1960s
Alan Turing test but not until rithm, data management and 1980s 1970s
1961
the Dartmouth Conference hardware has set quite an
(1955) did the definition of AI enormous commercialized
be published globally. revolution. With RLSs, Deep- The Second IBM IBM
AI Winter Deep Blue Watson
Mind can now complete all 49
Nevertheless, the AI develop- levels of Atari. AlphaGo can
ment experience 2 big “AI beat the world best in “Go”. 1980s
1990s 1997 2011
winter” when investment
and demand for AI went AI next big things will be AGI
down tremendously when and ASI where machine can Deep Mind
application for AI was still a perform or outperform human What's next? AlphaGo Atari
doubt and other technolo- beings.
gies was far more faster and
2017 2013
cheaper.

5
 Everything
is in favor for A convergence of algorithmic advances, data proliferation,

AI to bloom and tremendous increases in computing power and

storage has propelled AI from hype to reality.

Increasing power
Algorithmic
Explosion of data of computing
Advancement
& storage

With open sources ma-
chine learning libraries,
AI engineers now can
skip low level complexity
and focus on advancing
new algorithm
The quality and depth of
data will determine the
level of AI applications
you can achieve. Thus,
the explosion of data is
highly in favor of AI
The computing horse-
power is making far more
efficient. Both in the form
of raw CPU power and
large scale data storage
solutions

The AI is set to bloom in the near future 5

 Aerospace & Airline Services

Agriculture

Automotive & Transportation

AI is making
Consumer Products & Services

Energy & Utilities

Environment & Water impact in every

Financial

Food & Beverages

industries
Healthcare According to From Tech to Deep Tech report
by Hello Tomorrow and Boston Consulting
Manufacturing & Construction
Group, Artificial Intelligence and Data technol-
Mobile & Telecommunications ogy is making big impact on a wide range of
industries.
Retail
Healthcare and Mobile & Telecommunication
are the industries with the highest innovation
Innovation intensity of AI & Data technology by industries.
intensity. The reason for high intensity in this
(From Tech to Deep Tech, Hello Tomorrow, Boston Consulting Group)
sectors could be the pressure to reduce oper-
ating expense by automation and the large
amount of readily available data.
Low (1% - 3%) Strong (5% - 10%)
Meanwhile, Aerospace & Airline Services, Envi-
ronment & Water and Food & Beverages are
Medium (3% - 5%) Very strong (10% - 20%)
the industries with least innovation intensity.

*Target industry of AI & Data startups applied for

Hello Tomorrow Challenges 2016
7
02 GLOBAL
AI LANDSCAPE
 Top countries by number of AI startups

United States 1393

China 383

Israel 350

United Kingdom

USA and China

245

Canada 131

are the leading Japan 113

global hubs in AI
Top cities by number of AI startups
In terms of quantity of AI startup, the US and
Silicon Valley is still leading, with 1393 AI startups San Francisco 596
in the US and 596 AI startups in San Francisco,
London 211
China and Israel are the followers with 383 and
350 AI startups respectively. Tel Aviv 189

In terms of cities, London and Tel Aviv are the New York 180
2nd and 3rd with 211 and 189 AI startups respec-
Beijing 150
tively.
Boston 102

Tokyo 99

Global Artificial Intelligence Landscape

- Asgard VC, Roland Berger
9
Funding and Exit
among AI startups
are growing dramatically
This indicates a higher evaluation in Artificial Intelligence Startups in recent
years as the share of deal value correspond with the value of deals

FUNDING EXIT

Total Funding Value Growth Exit Value Growth

463% (2012 - 2017) 393% (2012 - 2017)

Median Seed Deal Value Median Exit Value

$500.000 (2012 - 2017) $38.000.000 (2012 - 2017)

Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2018

10
 The workforce shift,
acquisition spree and
open source tools are
AI biggest trends
These trends and drivers are the result of the recent
AI revolution which will shift even more dramatically
in the future

AI will reshape Acquisition sprees ML & Big data War for

the global workforce by major tech giants stack widely accessible AI talent

With the rapid develop- Tech giants are now With many open source The AI revolution is
ment of AI application, investing heavily in AI tools for AI and big data like causing demand surge
the global workforce will and their most common TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, and supply shortage in
soon eliminate “Below way is through M&A with Hadoop freely available, the AI engineers market.
the API” jobs where emerging AI startup. This cost for data management It will be a fierce war for
machine tells human will also be a key target and operations has talent among startups
what to do for startup exits dropped dramatically and tech giants

11
22.000 AI researchers and engineers worldwide

5.000 High - level researchers

3.000 AI candidates in the world are available for

work It will be a
50% Excess in global demand for AI engineers
in 2018
fierce competition
$140,000 Average salary for ML engineer in the US for AI talents for
Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2018 both startups and
tech giants
Stateof.ai 2018

Top companies by number of AI talent

There is a global hungry for talent since
demand for AI talents always exceeds
1400
supply.
1000
In the war for AI talents, sky-high salary is
the ultimate weapon.
900
In the employer scene, Google is widely
450 acknowledged as the leading employer of
AI talent
400

300

Stateof.ai 2018
12
 Top funded AI startups

$1600M

$940M

Tech giants
$607M

are investing
$577M

$481M

big money in AI Crunchbase, October 2018

by acquiring Biggest tech giants by the total amount

of money spent acquiring AI Startups
AI Startup
$3900M

Startup Scene: 40 percent of the 30 most $871M

funded AI startups since 2016 are based in
China. $786M

Corporate Scene: Google is the leading $776M

tech giants in the AI startups acquiring
scene $690M

$680M

$629M

RS Components, 2018

13
The recent AI progress
is set to eliminate The “below the API” jobs are expected to either

“below the API” jobs replaced by developed AI and technologies or cut

down to low-paid jobs

“Above the API” jobs

Tell the machines what to do

“The API Line”

“Below the API” jobs

Told by machines what to do

14
Open source tools have made AI/ ML
widely accessible for everyone
With widely available AI/ML frameworks and libraries, the cost for data operation has declined significantly.
AI researchers and engineers would be able to focus on interesting parts of the development process, instead of boring,
repeating parts.

TensorFlow is an open source
machine learning framework
that is easy to use and deploy
across a variety of platforms. It is
one of the most well-maintained
and extensively used frameworks
for machine learning.
Scikit-learn is a free software ma-
chine learning library for the Python
programming language.It features
various classification, regression and
clustering algorithms.
Keras is an open source software
library designed to simplify the
creation of deep learning models.
It is written in Python and can be
deployed on top of other AI tech-
nologies.

Theano is an open source Python library that
allows you to easily fashion various machine
learning models.It is regarded as an industry
standard that has inspired developments in
deep learning.
Torch is a machine learning library that offers a
wide array of algorithms for deep learning. The
open source framework provides you with
optimized flexibility and speed when handling
machine learning projects—without causing
unnecessary complexities in the process 15
 Transfer Learning AI Hardware

A machine learning tech- AI hardware like GPUs is

nique where a model now the key driver behind
trained on one task is progress in AI as AI
re-purposed on a second models require more and
related task. more amounts of data
Global artificial
intelligence
research has made Breakthrough #1
Reinforcement
learning system
a significant in computer vision progress

progress recently Computer Vision now uses

deep learning labeled
RL System progress
significantly recently that
videos of action with it can now build their own
object instead of images world model and be
trained within them
Transfer learning, AI Hardware and Distrib-
uted Learning are AI biggest development
in recent years along side with progress in
computer vision, RLS and AI models auto-
mation. The AI development is set to Distributed
advanced even more dramatically in the
AI models “Federated”
near future
automation Learning
OpenMined is now decen-
AutoML can now automat- tralising Data Acquisition
ically discover the best and Model Training for
model for a computer users to access more
vision task suitable data to create a
16 more completed model
03
VIETNAM AI
ECOSYSTEM
Vietnam Artificial
Intelligence
Ecosystem Education

Accelerators
Corporates Incubators
VCs

Vietnam AI
Ecosystem

Supporting
Startups
Organizations

18
Startups
AI startups in Vietnam includes AI applied products
and AI research labs. Both plays a core role in the
ecosystem as a whole, connecting other players
such as: corporates, universities, investors and other
supporting organizations.
Applied-AI startups build AI solutions to solve a spe-
cific customers’ problem in a specific industry.
Meanwhile, research labs develop solutions to apply
in a wide range of industries.

Applied Tech

Research Labs

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Accelerators/ Currently, there are few AI-focused Accelerators/Incuba-

Incubators/
tors/VCs in Vietnam, as well as in the region. They often pay
more attention to the business and consider AI as a
nice-to-have tech enabler rather than a core technology.

Venture Capital A wave of AI-focused Accelerators/Incubators/VCs in the

future should be a crucial to the development of AI ecosystem.

20
 Domestic

Corporates

Foreign or domestic corporates in Vietnam

are now investing heavily in AI, especially
by acquiring AI startups or creating their
own research labs, companies.

- FPT recently introduced their own AI plat- Foreign

form FPT.ai in FPT techday.
- Zalo and Shinhan collaborated to inte-
grate AI into Fintech

The participation of corporates is vital

since corporates can support AI startups in
terms of capital, market access and be the
buyer of AI startups.

21
 Universities

Education

Some of the universities in VIetnam

have some AI modules in their curricu-
lum. However, this is not an emphasis.

AI Training Programs There are also several AI training pro-

grams organized by tech companies
and other education organizations to fill
the gap.

22
 Supporting Community builders and media plays a vital role in
the development of AI ecosystem: organizing

Organization events, providing connections to AI startups and

developing an active AI community.

Community Builders

Media

23
Some important milestones
in Vietnam AI Ecosystem

4/2017
IBM Watson came to 5/2017 6/2017 7/2017
12/2017
Vietnam, initiated Topica AI Edtech Asia Vietnam AI Innovatube Frontier
Zalo AI Summit
with BIDV, OneNet, Hackathon 2017 Hackathon Summit
VTVLIve

6/2018
5/2018 12/2017
Zalo and Shihan 6/2018 12/2017
AI4life - an AI Cốc Cốc's Hitech-
collaborated to bring Vietnam Mobile Day Zalo Hackathon 2017
convention Wednesday
AI into Fintech

6/2018
7/2018 10/2018
FPT introduced 8/2018 9/2018
AngelHack Vietnam Frontier
FPT.AI at FPT Nami AI Hackathon Zalo AI Challenge
Hackathon 2018 Summit
Techday

24
 Which industry are you operating in?
AI is making impact
on many industries
E-commerce 29% in Vietnam, but
Transportation &
18%
the e-commerce is
the most active
Logistics

Education 13%
sector due to
Real Estate 12% the huge amount of
Finance 11%
readily available data
AI companies are also active in Transportation
Agriculture 5%
& Logistics and Education.

Others 12%

Research by rubikAI

25
 Which are the biggest constraints for AI ecosystem in Vietnam?

Talent 59%

Talent shortage is Access to data 47%

the biggest constraint

for AI ecosystem and Funding 35%

improvement in Facilities 24%

education system Regulation 18%

is a must
There is a demand-supply gap in AI talent Which are the important missing factors for the development
market. This is mainly due to the AI education of AI in Vietnam?
gap. Few education institutions in Vietnam
provide AI training content.
Improvement in
60%
education system
AI companies also have concerns of access to
data, funding, facilities and regulation and Foreign capital
want to see more foreign capital inflow and inflow 41%
support from government in the ecosystem.
Support from
35%
government

Research by rubikAI
26
Most of AI companies in Vietnam
are in very early stage with
little or no fund raised
59% of AI companies in Vietnam is 2 years old or less and only 34% has
raised more than $200.000 from external funding.

How long has your company been operating?

18% 29% 12% 23% 18%

0 - 6 months 2 - 5 years

6 - 12 months > 5 years

1 - 2 years

How much fund did you raise?

30% 23% 13% 17% 17%

We haven't planned to raise fund $200.000 - 1.000.000

$0 - $50.000 > $1.000.000

Research by rubikAI
$50.000 - $200.000

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AI companies have a small
headcount of employees
as well as AI engineers
As the major of AI companies in Vietnam are in early stage, the scale of the
companies in terms of total number of employees and AI engineers is small.
68% of the companies has less than 50 employees and 70% has less than 10 AI
engineers

How many people are there in your company?

35% 33% 13% 19%

1-10 51-100

11-50 >100

How many AI engineers are there in your company?

70% 23% 7%

1-10 51-100

11-50 >100
Research by rubikAI
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AI companies are facing The top 3 challenges for AI companies in Vietnam:
Market adoption (70%), Talent shortage (61%) and Time
many challenges but still to market (53%)

very bullish However, 29% feels they deal “Well" and 13% deal “Very
well" with the challenges

What are the challenges for your company? Market adoption 70%

Talent shortage 61%

Time to market 53%

Capital intensity 50%

Technical
31%
uncertainty

Competitive
29%
market

Regulatory risk 10%

How well did you cope with these challenges?

12% 6% 40% 29% 13%

Very bad Bad Fine Well Very well

Research by rubikAI 29
Venture Capital and
Corporates can be Which type of partner do you plan to set up partnership with?

valuable partners for

AI companies since
Venture Capital 53%

they can help with Corporates 47%

capital, access to data Other startups 41%

and access to market
Accelerators/Incubators 23%

AI companies also plan to set up partnership Governmental

Organizations 20%
with other startups (41%), accelerators/incu-
bators (23%) and governmental organizations
(20%) Universities/Educational
Institutions 6%

Research by rubikAI

30
About Publisher

rubikAI stimulates the adoption of Artificial Intelligence

in enterprise and university by expanding a solid technical
base and connecting adequate resources for Vietnamese
organization.

G&H Ventures is an early-stage investor with a sharp focus

on technology sectors. We get involved really early and help
founders to tackle the most challenging problems with a
strong hands-on approach. We are looking for startups that
can approciately leverage AI tools to solve problems in
healthcare, logistics, commerce, fintech and enterprise
sectors.

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Email: rubikAI@nexusfrontier.tech
Website: rubikAI.com
Phone: (+84) 335708698 - Vy Tran Email: hello@gh-vc.co
Address: Kico-working Space, 4th floor, T2 Building, Website: gh-vc.co
Times Tower, 35 Le Van Luong str, Thanh Xuan, Hanoi Phone: (+84) 909002696 - Louis Nguyen