May 17, Terry Gou, the founder and chairman of Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronics, has attended the 2^nd World Intelligence Congress and demonstrated his point of view in industrial internet service. He also emphasized that Foxconn is exploring blockchain technology as a technical support for supply chain finance.

Guo gave a speech titled “Entity Economy + Digital Economy = Industrial Internet” in the Sub-forums. He indicated that industrial internet has 3 main characteristics. First of all, the network effect has been highlighted. The value of a industrial Internet platform is 100 times bigger than an e-commerce internet platform. This is because the number of objects connected by a industrial Internet platform, includes both the users and the machines, are much greater than an e-commerce internet platform.

The second characteristic is the Matthew effect. When the industrial APPs and users on an industrial internet platform reaches a certain scale, the platform may experience a rapid growth.

The last one is the substitution effect. The industrial Internet platform may effectively reduce the time, cost and programs of enterprise-class information deployment. It can also be used in the  reconstruction and dissemination of the industrial knowledge.

Gou also highlighted the AI used in the entity economy must be accurate and structured. Other advanced high-tech can also be adopted. He disclosed that Foxconn is exploring blockchain technology currently and is going to apply this new tech to their daily business procedures. He emphasized that the cryptology and consensus mechanism of blockchain technology could be adopted in supply chain finance to build a decentralized, transparent and more efficient network.

Yesterday, Gou gave a speech at Tsinghua University, he disclosed that Foxconn is currently building up an industrial internet. For instance, they are developing a blockchain-based cash flow platform. It basically links industrial and Internet supply chain enterprises together and will establish a credit mechanism for with the small and medium-sized (SME) enterprises utilizes the transparency and unmodifiable characteristics of blockchain to solve the problem in SEM financing.

Earlier this week, HCM Capital, the venture capital arm of Foxconn has joined a $7 million Series A round in digital identity startup Cambridge Blockchain. It is an initiatives that Foxconn is exploring multiple possible deployments of blockchain-powered identity system for industrial internet services, supply chain finance data registration and more.