Sogou listed, 39-year-old Wang Xiaochuan cried： Thanks to Zhang Chaoyang, thanks to his mother.

Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan and his mother took a group photo after ringing the bell. Sohu technology map

At 9: 30 on November 9th, US Eastern Time, sogou (NYSE：SOGO), the second largest search engine company in China, landed on the NYSE. At about 11: 30, the transaction officially started, and the opening price was $13.25, which was about 1.92% higher than the issue price. Its market value exceeded $5 billion (about RMB 33.13 billion).

Sogou listed a total of 392 million shares, with an issue price of $13 per share.

At 9: 30, Zhang Chaoyang, Chairman and CEO of Sohu and Chairman of sogou, and Wang Xiaochuan, Sogou CEO, dropped a hammer and rang the bell at the same time.

Based on the opening price of $13.25, Wang Xiaochuan, who holds 5.5% of the shares, has a net worth of $275 million (about RMB 1.811 billion). Because he is still unmarried, at the age of 39, he has become a veritable "bachelor of diamonds". Zhang Chaoyang has also become a billionaire with three listed companies, including Sohu, Changyou and sogou.

On November 9, sogou landed on the NYSE.

At the listing ceremony, Wang Xiaochuan was emotional. He said that the first person he would like to thank was Zhang Chaoyang. "As the godfather of China Internet, he supported me to do search. Our team’s current achievements cannot be separated from his vision and support."

Speaking of his mother, Wang Xiaochuan cried. "I am especially grateful to my mother. I arrived in Beijing in 1996, and I was only busy with my work for 21 years. I was more willful and didn’t care enough for my family. I looked very glamorous. My mother was silently making contributions, and some friends have always supported me."

"It is a great honor for a person to give his most glorious days to Internet companies and dedicate what he has learned to users in China." Wang Xiaochuan said.

Wang Xiaochuan is called "Wudaokou goalkeeper" by the outside world, and has never left Sohu system and Wudaokou since he graduated from Tsinghua University. In 2004, Zhang Chaoyang decided to set up a project in sogou to help Sohu’s content and advertising business. Wang Xiaochuan, who just graduated at the age of 27, served as vice president. In 2008, Wang Xiaochuan made Sogou browser in various unfavorable environments, which opened the road of "input method-browser-search" traffic realization. In 2013, PC Internet traffic began to rapidly transfer to the mobile Internet, and Wang Xiaochuan finally chose Tencent and Ma Huateng, which laid a cornerstone for today’s independent and successful listing.

Wang Xiaochuan said in his speech that sogou’s listing is not a dream, but an instinct. It is a summary of sogou’s 14 years and the first half of his life. There is still a long way to go. "Today is a new beginning, sorting out the past and starting a new journey."

Analysts believe that Baidu (Nasdaq：BIDU), the largest search engine company in China, has landed in the US capital market, and both companies have also cut into artificial intelligence from search, so sogou needs to tell a new story.

In an interview with The Paper and other domestic media, Wang Xiaochuan said that the industry has been hoping to have another search engine to break the monopoly position and re-stir the search market pattern in China.

Tencent (00700.HK) is the largest shareholder of Sohu, holding 38.7% of the shares. However, according to an agreement between Sohu, Tencent and sogou, Sohu has more voting rights and still holds control over sogou.

Sogou search is the default search engine for Tencent’s products, such as mobile QQ browser, qq.com, etc., and the cooperation period is until September 2018. Tencent intends to extend the agreement to 2023 without affecting the user experience.

On November 8, the share price of China Literature Limited, a subsidiary of Tencent’s online literature business, rose by more than 100% on the first day of listing in Hong Kong, creating the largest technology company IPO in the past 10 years.

Search is a highly competitive track. Looking back, many search companies have withdrawn from the track. Sogou’s search traffic growth rate and revenue growth rate have entered the "fast lane", and will vigorously enter artificial intelligence.

In the third quarter of 2017, sogou’s total revenue was US$ 257 million, up 55.1% year-on-year and 22.0% quarter-on-quarter. Among them, the income from search and search-related advertising business was $226 million. In the third quarter, sogou’s net profit was US$ 31 million, up 54.2% year-on-year and 31.7% quarter-on-quarter.

For the artificial intelligence strategy mentioned in sogou’s book many times, Wang Xiaochuan told The Paper that the search company itself is good at doing AI. Compared with competitors, "with 1/10 and 1/20 people, we can make continuous breakthroughs in market share and product technology. The key point is to have a clear direction and use scenarios."

Wang Xiaochuan said that today, the input method should be redefined again, with language as the core in information input and output, which will bring more convenient human-computer interaction and knowledge calculation, and help people’s vision, hearing and brain work.

"At present, what AI can do is amazing, and it can translate people’s voice into words. In fact, this is a simple matter. The next step we have to break through is the understanding of language itself. " Wang Xiaochuan said.

However, Wang Xiaochuan did not directly answer how long artificial intelligence will bring income returns.