科大讯飞：智能语音头雁能否领航大模型时代？

As their industries experience explosive growth, technology-driven innovative companies face a number of critical decision points: Faced with fierce market competition due to homogeneity, should they focus on their areas of specification or try to expand their product lines and business scope? Should they go it alone or collaborate with competitors to create an industry ecosystem? iFLYTEK is a classic example of how a company can tackle these decision-making dilemmas. This case, based on a review of the founder Liu Qingfeng’s entrepreneurial journey, narrates several key iterations of iFLYTEK’s business model. From becoming a leader in China’s intelligent speech recognition industry to venturing into artificial general intelligence (AGI), it presents the choices and challenges iFLYTEK faced in the latest wave of large language models (LLM). This case will inspire students to explore how technology-driven innovative companies can consistently break business boundaries both vertically and horizontally, and how they can maintain a competitive edge in technological innovation and commercial application. In addition, the case describes the enormous opportunities and challenges currently facing iFLYTEK. Liu would need to consider the following questions: Since the era of LLM is upon us, how long can iFLYTEK maintain its first-mover advantage in the field of intelligent speech recognition? Should iFLYTEK continue to upgrade and diversify its intelligent product offering, or cut its unprofitable product lines? Can iFLYTEK’s open ecosystem model give it an edge in the LLM era?