Unique Research · Company / funding · March 20, 2023
Langboat Tech (澜舟科技) closed Pre-A+ led by Beijing Zhongguancun Science City Co., with Sequoia China (Stones Capital) and Sinovation Ventures. Founded 2021 — incubated from zero by Sinovation; founder Dr. Zhou Ming (ex-Tsinghua professor, CCF VP, Sinovation chief scientist). Open-source NLP LMs + engines for marketing, finance, cultural creative.
Early product: Mencius (孟子) light Chinese LM — #1 on CLUE, rivaling 100B-param peers (vs Tencent/Sogou). Mencius Cognitive Engine: search/gen/translate/dialogue + vertical SaaS (MT, assisted writing, doc processing). Hit product: Langboat Panda Novelist. Partnering ChineseAll (中文在线) on ChatGPT-class product from their Chinese corpus.
Kai-Fu Lee framing: AI commercialization still “first quarter”; ChatGPT pushed the game into Q2; AI 2.0 = 10× mobile-internet platform chance — China’s first real platform race. Big-tech LMs stay internal; SMEs lack access — Langboat fills the gap. Mar 14 Sinovation “AI 1.0→2.0” event: launched Mencius MChat controllable LM — vertical/regional fast-tune; roadmap 10B and 100B; chat/QA/translate…
— END —