IFlytek

Quality 0.50 · 2 views · Updated 2 months ago

Chinese technology company

title: "IFlytek" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["companies-listed-on-the-shenzhen-stock-exchange", "information-technology-companies-of-china", "companies-based-in-hefei", "software-companies-established-in-1999", "government-owned-companies-of-china", "chinese-companies-established-in-1999", "chinese-brands", "companies-in-the-csi-100-index", "mass-surveillance-in-china", "1999-in-hefei"] description: "Chinese technology company" topic_path: "geography/china" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFlytek" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Chinese technology company ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox company"]

FieldValue
nameiFlytek
logoFile:IFlytek logo.png
imageBeijing iFLYTEK Building at ZPark Phase I (20240807160653).jpg
image_captioniFlytek office in Beijing
native_name科大讯飞
native_name_langzh
typePublic; State-owned enterprise
traded_as
CSI A50
industryInformation technology
foundation
founderLiu Qingfeng
location_cityHefei, Anhui
location_countryChina
area_servedspeech synthesis, speech recognition and natural language processing
ownerChina Mobile
homepage
::

| name = iFlytek | logo = File:IFlytek logo.png | image = Beijing iFLYTEK Building at ZPark Phase I (20240807160653).jpg | image_caption = iFlytek office in Beijing | native_name = 科大讯飞 | native_name_lang = zh | type = Public; State-owned enterprise | traded_as = CSI A50 | industry = Information technology | foundation = | founder = Liu Qingfeng | location_city = Hefei, Anhui | location_country = China | area_served = speech synthesis, speech recognition and natural language processing | key_people = | products = | services = | revenue = | operating_income = | net_income = | assets = | equity = | owner = China Mobile | num_employees = | subsid = | homepage = | footnotes =

iFlytek (), styled as iFLYTEK, is a partially state-owned Chinese information technology company established in 1999. It creates voice recognition software and 10+ voice-based internet/mobile products covering education, communication, music, intelligent toys industries. State-owned enterprise China Mobile is the company's largest shareholder. The company is listed in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and it is backed by several state-owned investment funds.

The company was spun off from University of Science and Technology of China. The city of Hefei is a major investor in iFlytek. The company has faced accusations from human rights groups and the United States government of involvement in mass surveillance.

History

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Liu_Qingfeng-20240309.png" caption="Liu Qingfeng, founder of iFlytek"] ::

Liu Qingfeng, who was then a Ph.D. student in the University of Science and Technology of China, started a voice computing company, iFlytek in 1999. Liu and his colleagues were operating the company at the USTC campus until they decided to moved it in Heifei. He also presented his business concept to then head of Microsoft Research Asia, Kai-Fu Lee, who warned Liu of competing to American advancements in speech recognition.

iFlytek would later work under the telecommunications company Huawei. In 2008, the company went public. In 2010, they launch their major consumer product, the iFlytek Input.

In 2017, Human Rights Watch reported the Chinese government had collected tens of thousands of voice samples, for use with iFlytek technology that identifies individuals by voice on phone calls or in public places.

In 2018, iFlytek signed a five-year collaboration agreement with the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In 2020, the agreement was terminated due to concerns about human rights abuses of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

China's government designated iFlytek as one of its "AI champions" in 2018.

In 2019, the company won the Applicative Award for its iFlytek translation system with the Super AI Leader award at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai.

In October 2023, the stock value of iFlytek fell after its AI-powered devices were reported to have criticized Mao Zedong.

In 2024, iFlytek introduced the AI platform SparkGen, an automated video creation tool. That same year in June 2024 during the unveiling of its Xinghuo 4 large language model (LLM), founder Liu Qingfeng admits that due to U.S. restrictions such as those of U.S. components used in computing platforms, the company will pursue to train its LLMs on "self-developed, controllable" infrastructure. The company stated that their LLMs were trained completely using Huawei's computing platform.

In July 2024, iFlytek established its global headquarters in Hong Kong. Along with the opening of its international headquarters, the company also unveiled its five-year HK$400 million (US$51.2 million) investment plan. In April 2025, iFlytek released Xinghuo X1, a large language model worked on by both iFlytek and Huawei.

Products and services

Voice speech and recognition systems

One of the company's major product was the iFlytek Input released in 2010. It was one of the early counterparts of Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google Assistant in China. Later versions of Input allowed translations for face-to-face conversations and closed-captioning for phone calls in 23 Chinese dialects.

In terms of research and development in speech recognition, iFlytek showcased during a 2017 visit of U.S. President Donald Trump to Beijing, that their technology can identify and record an individual's voice in a crowded environment.

iFlytek Spark

iFlytek Spark (), also known as iFLYTEK Spark Desk, is a large language model developed by iFlytek. iFlytek Spark was first unveiled in May 2023 and was released in September 2023 after the Chinese government's approval.

History

On May 6, 2023, iFlytek CEO Liu Qingfeng unveiled their AI model SparkDesk. The large language model was developed based on Huawei's AI chip, Ascend. It was then updated to SparkDesk 2.0 in August 2023 and SparkDesk 3.0 in October 2023.

AI devices powered by Spark AI received backlash in October 2023 after photos were shared in Baidu's Baijiahao of the generative AI criticizing Chairman Mao Zedong. As a result, the company's shares plunged by 10 percent.

In January 2024, iFlytek upgraded their model to iFlytek SparkDesk 3.5. On 15 August 2024, iFlyTek introduced Spark 4.0, which the company benchmarked against OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo.

Xinghuo large language model

The Xinghuo large language model is a large language model developed by iFlytek in 2024 that solely relies on Huawei's computing platform due to US restrictions on advanced AI chips, particularly those from NVIDIA.

In early 2025, iFlytek and Huawei collaborated to improve the performance of the Xinghuo X1 model by addressing China's domestic chip limitations. According to its chairman Liu Qingfeng, they managed to raise the efficiency of Huawei's Ascend 910B AI chip from 20% to nearly 80% of Nvidia's capabilities. However, Huawei's CEO Ren Zhengfei stated that their Ascend chips still lagged "by a generation." The Xinghuo X1 model is claimed to be the only large language powered by China's "domestic computing power" trained with 70 billion parameters.

Partnerships

iFlytek has partnerships with Japanese company Odelic, Malaysian company Simon, and U.S. company A.O. Smith. iFlytek also managed to build servers in Singapore, Dubai, and Frankfurt, Germany.

Reception

Chinese regulations

In 2021, iFlytek, along with Chinese gaming company Tencent Holdings, received a notice for violation from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China (MIIT) for not rectifiying privacy concerns.

U.S. sanctions

In October 2019, iFlytek was sanctioned by the United States for allegedly using its technology for mass surveillance and human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

References

References

  1. Ben Chiang. (23 March 2012). "iFlytek Announces All New Voice Cloud and Siri-like Product". TechNode.
  2. Hvistendahl, Mara. (May 18, 2020). "How a Chinese AI Giant Made Chatting—and Surveillance—Easy".
  3. Harney, Alexandra. (June 13, 2019). "Risky partner: Top U.S. universities took funds from Chinese firm tied to Xinjiang security". [[Reuters]].
  4. Mark Lee. (2012-08-24). "China Mobile to Acquire 15% of Voice-Recognition Company". [[Bloomberg L.P.]].
  5. Dai, Sarah. (July 17, 2019). "China's voice recognition champion iFlytek gets US$407 million funding boost from state investors". [[South China Morning Post]].
  6. Hu, Richard. (2023). "Reinventing the Chinese City". [[Columbia University Press]].
  7. (2022-06-22). "State plans, research, and funding". [[Routledge]].
  8. Inskeep, Steve. (May 30, 2024). "AI companies in China aim for innovation despite U.S. restrictions on access to parts". [[NPR]].
  9. Hvistendahl, Mara. (May 18, 2020). "How a Chinese AI Giant Made Chatting—and Surveillance—Easy".
  10. (2017-10-22). "China: Voice Biometric Collection Threatens Privacy".
  11. Conner-Simons, Adam. (June 15, 2018). "CSAIL launches new five-year collaboration with iFlyTek". [[MIT News]].
  12. Knight, Will. (2020-04-21). "MIT Cuts Ties With a Chinese AI Firm Amid Human Rights Concerns".
  13. Zhang, Angela Huyue. (2024). "High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy". [[Oxford University Press]].
  14. "Top AI awards presented at World AI Conference".
  15. Ye, Josh. (October 24, 2023). "Shares in China's iFlyTek tumble after reports AI-powered device criticised Mao". [[Reuters]].
  16. (March 2024). "iFLYTEK Unveils AI SparkGen platform at MWC 2024".
  17. (2024-06-27). "Chinese AI firm iFlyTek says its LLMs are trained completely on Huawei platform".
  18. (2025-03-20). "Chinese AI firms turn to Hong Kong as gateway to global markets".
  19. (2024-07-19). "AI giant iFlytek to invest HK$400 million in Hong Kong, opens new headquarters".
  20. (2025-04-23). "China's iFlytek touts reasoning model trained entirely with Huawei's AI chips".
  21. (2017-12-03). "China's A.I. Advances Help Its Tech Industry, and State Security". [[The New York Times]].
  22. "iFLYTEK Highlights Progress Towards a New AI Ecosystem at the 1024 Global Developer Festival-News-iFLYTEK".
  23. (2023-10-24). "iFlytek says its LLM outperforms ChatGPT model in Chinese".
  24. Ye, Josh. (September 5, 2023). "China's 360 and iFlytek release AI models to public".
  25. Feed, TechNode. (2023-05-08). "iFlytek unveils large language model, claims it outperforms ChatGPT · TechNode".
  26. Feed, TechNode. (2023-08-16). "iFlytek unveils updated LLM SparkDesk V2.0 and new product iFlyCode 1.0 · TechNode".
  27. Feed, TechNode. (2024-01-31). "iFlytek claims the latest version of its AI model is as powerful as GPT-4 Turbo on certain metrics · TechNode".
  28. Dong, Cheyenne. (2024-06-28). "iFlytek Chairman touts latest AI Spark 4.0 model as comparable to GPT-4 Turbo, emphasizes total self-sufficiency · TechNode".
  29. (2025-06-11). "iFlytek says using local chips in AI models extends development time by 3 months".
  30. "China AI champion iFlytek looks abroad despite U.S. crackdown".
  31. (2021-03-15). "Beijing calls out iFlyTek, Tencent and over 100 others on data privacy".
  32. (October 8, 2019). "US sanctions 8 China tech companies over role in Xinjiang abuses". [[The Nikkei]].
  33. (October 8, 2019). "Expanded U.S. Trade Blacklist Hits Beijing's Artificial-Intelligence Ambitions". [[The Wall Street Journal]].

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

companies-listed-on-the-shenzhen-stock-exchangeinformation-technology-companies-of-chinacompanies-based-in-hefeisoftware-companies-established-in-1999government-owned-companies-of-chinachinese-companies-established-in-1999chinese-brandscompanies-in-the-csi-100-indexmass-surveillance-in-china1999-in-hefei