四大方向，50项课题！2025第一批“CCF-蚂蚁科研基金”正式发布

Core Insights - The "CCF-Ant Group Research Fund" has launched its first batch of projects for 2025, covering four major areas: data security and privacy protection, software-hardware collaboration, supercomputing and intelligent computing, and artificial intelligence, with a total of 50 projects, marking a record high in funding exceeding tens of millions [1][3][4] - The fund, initiated by Ant Group and the China Computer Federation (CCF) in 2020, has cumulatively supported over 500 million yuan (approximately 70 million USD) over five years, attracting nearly 1,000 experts and scholars to apply for funding [1][3] Group 1: Research Areas - The first research area, data security and privacy protection, focuses on homomorphic encryption, post-quantum security, and container security, aiming to provide comprehensive security for the trusted flow of data, which is increasingly critical in the era of generative AI [3][4] - The second area, software-hardware collaboration, has opened 15 projects aimed at optimizing homomorphic encryption performance, innovating operating systems, and formal verification [4] - The third area, supercomputing and intelligent computing, concentrates on high-performance computing and model training and inference optimization, with 5 projects available [4] - The fourth area, artificial intelligence, has opened 26 cutting-edge technology projects, including research on inference acceleration, multi-agent collaboration, reinforcement learning, and multimodal large models, aiming to advance foundational technologies and applications in AI [4] Group 2: Ant Group's Strategic Focus - Ant Group's technology strategy emphasizes data elements and artificial intelligence, with reported R&D investment reaching 23.45 billion yuan (approximately 3.3 billion USD) in 2024, focusing on AI and data technologies [4] - Ant Group's AI applications span healthcare, finance, and daily life, serving over 130 million users, with the "AI Health Steward" service reaching over 70 million users as of June this year [4] Group 3: Academic Collaboration - Alongside the fund's launch, Ant Group announced plans to co-create academic exchange activities with CCF, support the development of young scholars, and participate in forums like CNCC, aiming to establish a more systematic and multidimensional platform for research collaboration and talent exchange [4]