Dr. Bill Liu is the visionary founder of Royole, a Chinese and U.S.-based company with a valuation of US$5 billion for Series E round[1] , which may transform the way we interact with machines.
But how did Dr. Liu navigate two different cultures, multiple educational institutions, and the competitive tech sector, to create truly game-changing products well ahead of their time?
As part of a J.P. Morgan Tech Exchange fireside conversation with Hannes Hofmann, Head of Multifamily Office and Intermediaries for J.P. Morgan International Private Bank, Dr. Liu shed light on a remarkable inspiration.
The Display of the Future
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The Display of the Future
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The Making of a Pioneer
What is it about Founder and Chief Executive Officer Royole Corporation Dr. Bill Liu’s educational journey that has made him such a pioneer of the tech world? We spoke to Hannes Hofmann soon after his fireside discussion with the Royole founder.
Hannes Hofmann
Head of Multifamily Office and Intermediaries
International Private Bank
J.P. Morgan
J.P. Morgan has to manage one of the largest infrastructures on earth, both in relation to data centers and digital communications. That’s why the firm has a private cloud computing capacity named “Gaia”, in addition to leveraging all three of the main cloud providers in the United States.
Why does the firm need such significant computing power? Beer explains that calculating liquidity or credit risk is an intensive process that requires a combination of algorithms. In general, those calculations are conducted on the private cloud, but in particularly busy times, “we can seamlessly burst out into the public cloud for that compute,” explains Beer.
is Gaia, J.P. Morgan’s private cloud
With so much talk about the Internet of Things (IoT), the question is how does this connect to the operations of J.P. Morgan? In an organization that employs more than a quarter of a million people, the comfort and convenience of those staff is critically important. That’s why Beer’s team is continuing to design the work spaces of the future.
“IoT allows us to create something that is much richer for the employees – and that allows them to be even more productive as they serve our clients.”
The “IoT Workspace” allows staff to better connect and collaborate with each other by optimizing the use of space, while biometrics can maximize privacy and cybersecurity.
I is for IoT
“How can we extend the time of our servicing tech associates?” asks Beer.
The answer is virtual assistance and machine learning. JPMorgan Chase customers can now interact with an assistant, or “Bot”, who can engage in interactive chats to resolve problems being encountered - and quickly growing infrastructural challenges before they snowball.
“This is helping our staff to really focus more on servicing customers, versus finding information.”
is for Virtual Assistance
J.P. Morgan created Quorum, which is built off Ethereum, a blockchain-based distributed computing platform. It allows businesses to access consensus algorithm choices, privacy options and deployment configurations in one versatile, scalable platform.
“What's really important here is the business-use cases, and how you think about how blockchain can be applied to your business.” says Beer.
The Interbank Information Network (IIN), launched as a pilot in 2017, is another of the firm’s blockchain initiatives. It minimizes friction in the global payments process, enabling payments to reach beneficiaries faster and with fewer steps. Using blockchain technology, IIN reduces the time correspondent banks currently spend responding to compliance and other data-related inquiries that delay payments.
is for Blockchain
Taking advantage of the existing digitization of J.P Morgan’s wealth management capabilities, You Invest provides a simple and user-friendly entry point for investors. The platform allows the large existing customer-base to make over 100 stock or ETF trades with no commission.
“We want to leverage reusable components,” said Beer.
is for You Invest
J.P. Morgan partners with PayPal to reduce the settling time of payments. Alternative payments giant PayPal effectively plugs into the bank’s payment processing capabilities to reduce payment settling times from 24 hours, to real-time.
“Everyone’s talking about APIs (Application Program Interfaces),” says Beer. “That’s because digital experience now needs to extend outside of our walls. Our clients want to directly integrate into the business process of these services.”
is for Paypal API
“Today we live in an app world with access to over three million purpose-built, self-directed micro applications,” said Beer. “But what happens when you don’t know what you need?”
Chase Connect is a digital banking platform (or App) that helps businesses manage all their accounts in one place. It effectively plays the role of a financial advisory platform to help clients with a digital declutter.
is for Chase Connect
In the past year, machine learning has saved the firm US$150 million by identifying fraud.
Beer says she is regularly asked whether there is an ROI on AI machine learning, and these savings on fraud are her ready response. In the credit card space, algorithms are now continually tuned for fraud detection. These tools can also reduce friction and inconvenience for customers in a broader context where cyber-security will only grow in importance.
M is for Machine learning
“No one likes losing a password,” says Beer. That’s why her team is working towards creating a digital identity that doesn’t need passwords of any kind.
“It’s safer, it’s secure and there’s less customer friction in the experience,” she says.
The sheer scale of transactional activity managed by J.P. Morgan makes data protection and privacy the greatest priority of the technology team. Indeed, US$600 million goes toward these capabilities each year.
But Beer also reminds business owners to think about their own priorities by considering the times when data leaves their company and goes to a third party.
“How do you really know how that data is getting used?”
is for Data protection and Cybersecurity
is for IoT
is for Blockchain
is for Paypal API
is for Machine learning
Dr. Liu grew up in Jiangxi Province and would eventually attend Beijing’s Tsinghua University, which is often referred to a China’s MIT. From there he made the leap to Stanford University, where he was faced with the dilemma of finding a PhD dissertation that would sustain his interest while also contributing to technological development.
So he spent a lot of time lying on the Stanford lawn.
“For almost a month I was thinking very randomly about the connection between human and the world,” he said. He thought about nature, people, machines, and that “perceptions are overwhelmingly formed through visual sensory means.”
And thus commenced a fascination with display–and a desire to find new ways of connecting with machines.
“When you look back at the history, you can probably figure out what would be like in the future,” he said.
The result of that inspiration has been the creation of flexible display screens that are just 0.01 of a millimeter.
These improbable designs have well and truly captured the world’s attention. Dr. Liu has been recognized as the Fortune China 40 under 40's, 35 Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and Top 10 Most Innovative Entrepreneurs in the US and China by Forbes, amongst several other prestigious awards[2].
Unpacking perception
As consumers spend increasing amounts of time interacting with machines, particularly through smart phones, the size and preponderance of displays has also grown. Alas, there’s a natural conflict between large screen visual experience and portability–and Dr. Liu was determined to find a solution.
“We have to break the limitation of the form factor and make that connectible,” he says. “Flexible electronics, including flexible displays and flexible sensors are perfect to break this limitation of the physical form factor.”
We have to break the limitation of the form factor and make that connectible,
Despite a strong inspiration to commence innovating with screens after completion of his PhD, the time was not right. The financial crisis of 2009 delayed Dr. Liu’s plans to put together a start-up, and instead he accepted an offer at tech giant IBM. But his passion did not falter.
Three years later he got his wish to build a team, and in 2012 Royole was born with the mission to improve the way people interact with and perceive their world.
“In 2014, we uploaded a raw video of the world’s first and thinnest 0.01mm flexible display onto the Internet, and then a lot of people got very interested in the technology,” he said. In this year it had already made waves with a new approach.
Breaking the physical form factors
Interest in Royole spans the globe–just like Dr. Liu’s personal experience. Royole today has five offices–three in Shenzhen, one in Northern California, and one in Europe.
When Liu returned to Shenzhen, he noticed that “the diversity of cultures and experiences could be the answer to new technologies.” He saw talent–and a unique enthusiasm to turn ideas into prototypes, and from there, commercially available products. Achieving innovation within the company for providing better service to the customers is the primary goal.
“We have the user-experience study group who are doing a lot of innovation, a lot of research to understand what would be the best fit for this kind of new product design,” Liu stated.
“You've got to understand the consumer needs very well. You've got to ask the market what they want,” he said.
Today the company has more than 2,000 employees, with near 70% of them focused solely on research and development. Remarkably, nearly a quarter of his team have PhDs or advanced degrees in technology.
Innovation at all costs
Connecting all the screens
So where is the company heading next? Evidently, the development of 5G technology is of significant relevance to Royole, whose screens could conceivably form part of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), amongst many other applications.
“The previous Gs were all about connecting people with each other,” said Liu. “5G is really about connecting things–machines with machines."
As the IoT develops, we can consider a future with countless internet-connected devices, and the exchange of information with minor lags. Connecting Royole to the 5G network could allow connectivity not just across houses, but also across cities–and on multiple different types of surfaces.
“I think flexible displays and flexible sensors are the new platform technology for the next generation IoT and the human-machine interface,” he says.
5G is really about connecting machines with machines.
Curved Car Dashboard
First Foldable Phone FlexPai
Fashion Pieces
World’s First Foldable
3D Movie Theatre
RoWrite Writing Pad
Flexible Keyboard
Curved Phone
2014
World's thinnest full colour AMOLED flexible display
Meet Dr. Liu
Dr. Bill Liu is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Royole Corporation, a leading innovator and manufacturer of next-generation human-machine interface technologies and products such as advanced flexible displays, flexible sensors, and smart devices.
Dr. Liu founded Royole with his Stanford friends in 2012 with the mission to improve the way people interact with and perceive their world. Royole achieved a global USD $3 billion valuation in just four years, making it one of the fastest growing tech startups. As the company Founder, Dr. Liu was named 35 Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review in 2017, Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2017 and Top 10 Most Innovative Entrepreneurs in the US and China by Forbes in 2015, amongst several other prestigious awards.
Prior to founding Royole, Dr. Liu worked at IBM Corporation in New York from 2009 to 2012. He received a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2009, and B.S./M.S. degrees with honors in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2004/2006.
Dr. Bill Liu
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Royole Corporation
2015
2016
2017
2019
2018
The Making of a Pioneer - Transcript
[Music]
Hannes Hofmann: I just interviewed Dr Bill Liu, the founder and CEO of Royole Corporation.
Bill is an incredible success story for Chinese talent that has a truly global education.
If you think about it, he's young, he's 35, he is a visionary, he is a technologist, he's an entrepreneur who grew a company to have 2,200 employees that holds 2,500 patents.
He was born in Jiangxi Province in China; very early on it became clear that he's an extremely smart mind so he ended up in Beijing studying at Tsinghua University.
Some people might not know Tsinghua University is the equivalent to MIT in the US, so for very smart technology minds.
From there he went to Stanford, to California, did a PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford, and met two other people with a similar background, they went to Stanford and before they were at Tsinghua, and together with those two other people they had the idea that they wanted to start a company that manufactures fully flexible displays.
Now imagine that was 2008/2009.
To bring us back to the time, the first iPhone was launched by Apple in 2007. So if we go back to that time, the first iPhone which was much smaller than what we're used to today, and here's a group of very smart students who are already thinking that the future of displays should actually be easily foldable, rollable, transportable, and had the vision that they wanted to do that.
So in 2012 they went to Shenzhen and they started this company Royole that has a location in Shenzhen in China and a location in Silicon Valley, pretty much where Stanford is, so you get the US culture and the Chinese culture.
So lots of awards that they got for the work they have, but really the most remarkable thing about them is when you think about startups.
A startup that becomes a unicorn, a billion-dollar valuation, that's a big thing.
Well Royole today has a valuation of not one unicorn, two unicorns, three unicorns, no, ten unicorns - its valuation is ten billion dollars.
And incredible to hear about how he's gone through the process, how he raised money with his friends.
They built all these devices, they had early commercial success.
They have a B2B business, business-to-business, they have a B2C business, business-to-consumer, because business-to-consumer gives them the PR they need in order to get the B2B business going, and, and they just continue to churn out innovation
Of their 2,200 employees, a thousand are in R&D, and almost 500 have PhDs or advanced degrees in engineering.
So talking to him what stood out for me is that he said he would not have been able to do this just in China or just in the US, but having the ability to bring the two together, have campuses in both locations, made a really big difference for him and his company.
Now interesting to note, when he built his sixth generation production facility, the factory that now produces these fully flexible phones, he built the facility in Shenzhen because he thought the conditions in Shenzhen were such that they were the most conducive to building a factory.
I think it's a great story of innovation in China and how the smartest minds from China might actually get educated all around the world but then migrate back into the country and help the industry here develop more and more cutting edge technologies.
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[2]Source: Royole, data as of June 11, 2019.
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[1]Source: Royole, data as of June 11, 2019.
Meet the Panelists
Alexander Wolf is the Head of Investment Strategy for Asia at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. In this role, Mr. Wolf is responsible for developing and communicating the Private Bank’s view on the market, economy, and geopolitics for investors and clients in the Asia region.
Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, Mr. Wolf was the Senior Emerging Markets Economist with Aberdeen Standard Investments responsible for economic analysis and macro investing strategies covering China and global EM. Prior to this he spent ten years with the U.S. Government in roles at the State Department and Defense Department. Most recently, Mr. Wolf served as part of the diplomatic service with overseas postings to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the American Institute in Taiwan. His responsibilities included managing a range of economic policy issues including trade and investment negotiations, sanctions implementation, intellectual property rights protection, as well as advising senior officials on macroeconomic issues. Prior to joining the diplomatic service, Mr. Wolf was an officer at the Defense Department working on Asian security and defense policy. In addition to his government experience, Mr. Wolf has held roles at Lehman Brothers and Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics.
Mr. Wolf holds degrees in economics from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pittsburgh and has published extensively on China’s economy, US foreign policy, and North Korea. He resides in Hong Kong and speaks and reads Mandarin Chinese.
Alexander Wolf
Head of Investment Strategy for Asia
J.P. Morgan Private Bank
So where is the company heading next? Evidently, the development of 5G technology is of significant relevance to Royole, whose screens could conceivably form part of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), amongst many other applications.
“The previous Gs were all about connecting people with each other,” said Liu. “5G is really about connecting things–machines with machines."
As the IoT develops, we can consider a future with countless internet-connected devices, and the exchange of information with minor lags. Connecting Royole products, such as the world’s first commercial foldable phone––Royole FlexPai to the 5G network could allow connectivity not just across houses, but also across cities–and on multiple different types of surfaces.
“I think flexible displays and flexible sensors are the new platform technology for the next generation IoT and the human-machine interface,” he says.
Connecting all the screens
5G is really about connecting machines with machines.
Dr. Bill Liu
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Royole Corporation
Interest in Royole spans the globe–just like Dr. Liu’s personal experience. Royole today has five offices–three in Shenzhen, one in Northern California, and one in Europe.
When Liu returned to Shenzhen, he noticed that “the diversity of cultures and experiences could be the answer to new technologies.” He saw talent–and a unique enthusiasm to turn ideas into prototypes, and from there, commercially available products. Achieving innovation within the company for providing better service to the customers is the primary goal.
“We have the user-experience study group who are doing a lot of innovation, a lot of research to understand what would be the best fit for this kind of new product design,” Liu stated.
“You've got to understand the consumer needs very well. You've got to ask the market what they want,” he said.
Today the company has more than 2,000 employees, with near 70% of them focused solely on research and development. Remarkably, nearly a quarter of his team have PhDs or advanced degrees in technology.
Innovation at all costs
As consumers spend increasing amounts of time interacting with machines, particularly through smart phones, the size and preponderance of displays has also grown. Alas, there’s a natural conflict between large screen visual experience and portability–and Dr. Liu was determined to find a solution.
“We have to break the limitation of the form factor and make that connectible,” he says. “Flexible electronics, including flexible displays and flexible sensors are perfect to break this limitation of the physical form factor.”
Despite a strong inspiration to commence innovating with screens after completion of his PhD, the time was not right. The financial crisis of 2009 delayed Dr. Liu’s plans to put together a start-up, and instead he accepted an offer at tech giant IBM. But his passion did not falter.
Three years later he got his wish to build a team, and in 2012 Royole was born with the mission to improve the way people interact with and perceive their world.
“In 2014, we uploaded a raw video of the world’s first and thinnest 0.01mm flexible display onto the Internet, and then a lot of people got very interested in the technology,” he said. In this year it had already made waves with a new approach.
Breaking the physical form factors
We have to break the limitation of the form factor and make that connectible.
Dr. BIll Liu
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Royole Corporation
The Making of a Pioneer
What is it about Founder and Chief Executive Officer Royole Corporation Dr. Bill Liu’s educational journey that has made him such a pioneer of the tech world? We spoke to Hannes Hofmann soon after his fireside discussion with the Royole founder.
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View Transcript
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An Insider's View - Transcript
[Music]
Alexander Wolf: Today I spoke on a panel entitled: The Politics of Tech. A New Cold War?
where we explore this issue of increasing tech tensions between the US and China as they evolve past a trade war and trade negotiations, what does this increased competition over tech look like?
We talked about what the implications could be for investors, how both economies could be affected, and how this, in many ways, unprecedented situation of great power competition, rapid advancement in China, the threat that China can pose to western tech companies. How that might play out in the future.
A good example is 5G.
Right now, China in many ways leads the world in terms of 5G operational roll out.
But an example of just how interconnected the two economies are is that China is ahead of the US in rolling out 5G, but, in many ways the 5G network in China relies on critical components from the US.
So, very much it is a double-edged sword.
in that they heavily rely on each other, and the fact is that a lot of countries around the world, if they want to roll out 5G cheaply, will probably have to rely on Chinese firms to do it.
And so this interconnectedness, and then the threat of that pulling apart in this concept of a tech cold war, creates very large risks.
We do think that this interconnectedness is profitable, it’s, for many companies, it boosts growth, it’s positive for consumers … will be enough to prevent some of these worst possible outcomes.
As tensions increase, as this competition increases, whether it’s rapid advancement of China in 5G or its rapid advancement in artificial intelligence, facial recognition etc. … competition is not necessarily a bad thing.
I think the way this is often portrayed, even just using the phrase cold war, makes it sound overwhelmingly negative.
But the fact is, in the actual Cold War, you saw one of the erm, a period of rapid innovation because of competition between the US and Soviet Union.
And so as China is competing in semiconductors, as China’s competing in a lot of industries they didn’t used to compete in, it is forcing more investment - on both sides.
And as you see increased investment, whether it’s in IOT or many of these fast growing sectors, that investment can boost growth.
That investment can boost innovation.
That investment is good for the consumer.
And so, competition, just like competition between companies, competition between countries is not necessarily something to fear.
So, there could be a silver lining there.
One thing we did talk about on the panel was this, of course, old Cold War concept of mutually assured destruction.
Where, right now, because China relies on the US consumer, and the US market. Whereas, US companies also rely on the Chinese market for sales. But because both countries rely on each other, there is so much, there is a lot of sales, there’s a lot of trade, there’s a lot of profits generated by trade between countries, and that is enough to prevent some of the worst outcomes.
And so while we think that there are different risks of a tech cold war, there are risks of the economies decoupling, there’s risks of these economies seeking self-autonomy in the tech world.
The fact is that integration of the two economies’ trade, multi nationals, manufacturing base being set up in both countries, has been very successful, has been very positive.
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