Unique Research · Insight / monthly · September 15, 2023 · Full rewrite of news + secondary market snapshot + primary deals — not a stub
August 2023’s AIGC pulse: OpenAI’s first public acquisition and GPT-3.5 Turbo fine-tuning; Microsoft’s Databricks alternative path; Google’s AI life-coach test; Adobe Express GA; Foxconn as NVIDIA’s largest AI substrate supplier; China launches (Xiaomi on-device LM, ByteDance Doubao, iFLYTEK Spark V2.0, Alibaba Live Portrait & DAMO multi-cancer model, vivo 7B near GPT-4 on C-Eval, Baidu ERNIE Bot full open). Capital: Inworld $50M A+, Anthropic $100M from SKT, Modular $100M A, AI21 $155M C, Voiceflow $15M, Rootly $12M A, Tavus ~$18M A, and more.
Contents: 01 Industry flash (global / China) · 02 Transactions (secondary / primary) · 03 Disclaimer.
01.1 Global news
- OpenAI’s first acquisition — Global Illumination. NYC startup by three ex-Facebook/Instagram alumni building AI creative tools/digital experiences (YouTube/Google/Pixar/Riot alumni also). Team joins OpenAI core products (ChatGPT)—possible multimedia, DALL·E expansion, or video vs Runway. Undisclosed price. OpenAI’s first public buy since 2015; via VC fund it had backed ≥16 AI startups by Jan (The Information).
- GPT-3.5 Turbo fine-tuning open. Custom models can match/beat GPT-4 on some tasks; GPT-4 fine-tune later in fall. Benefits: task focus, domain language, lower latency/cost vs prior davinci-002/babbage-002-only path.
- Microsoft × Databricks AI apps on Azure — train from scratch or adapt open models as OpenAI alternatives; competitive tension with OpenAI partnership.
- Google testing AI life coach with DeepMind + Scale AI; 100+ PhD-domain experts evaluate; career/relationship advice—Google also warns against over-reliance on AI for major life decisions.
- Adobe Express GA (public after June beta)—flyers, TikTok, résumés, Reels, logos, banners; Firefly text-to-image/effects inside Express.
- Foxconn wins first NVIDIA HGX AI chip substrate orders (>50% share) plus prior DGX—becomes NVIDIA’s largest substrate supplier. Nexchip KL730 (TSMC 12nm) for ADAS/edge/smart home; NanoGPT support for lower energy.
01.2 China news
- Lei Jun (Xiaomi): R&D spend >¥20B this year; 5G SEP share 4.1% globally; plans ≥¥100B future R&D. On-device lightweight LM progress; XiaoAI LM version testing soon; phone-side LM initial success.
- ByteDance Doubao (internal Grace) — first AI chat product; strong copywriting; search+jump; roles: Doubao, Xiao Ning, English tutor, all-purpose writing assistant; accuracy still in test.
- iFLYTEK Spark V2.0 — code/image/video gen + plugins; code ability within 1–2% of ChatGPT on industry benchmarks (Liu Qingfeng).
- Alibaba Cloud Live Portrait — photo + text/voice → talking digital-human video; ModelScope demo; CVPR/ICCV interest.
- DAMO multi-cancer model — Mask Transformer unified detect/segment/diagnose for 8 cancers (lung, CRC, liver, gastric, breast, esophageal, pancreatic, kidney) + subtypes; hospital pilots.
- vivo_Agent_LM_7B — cloud LM; C-Eval near GPT-4; strong humanities/social science; may power Jovi.
- Baidu ERNIE Bot fully open Aug 31 — App Store / Android / web; five capabilities (literary, business copy, math/logic, Chinese understanding, multimodal); AI-native apps showcasing understand/generate/logic/memory.
02.1 Secondary market
Among AIGC-concept listed names: 27 saw YoY H1 revenue decline; 38 with H1 revenue under ¥1B; 29 YoY net-profit decline; 41 with H1 attributable profit ≤¥100M. H1 price movers included names such as Hongbo Shares among the watched AIGC basket (charts in CN original).
02.2 Primary market (selected August deals)
- Inworld AI — $50M (~¥350M) A+ (Aug 2), ~$500M valuation; Lightspeed, Stanford, First Spark (ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt / Samsung Next / LG Ventures) + existing. ~70 staff after 2 years; Microsoft, Disney, Meta, Intel among backers. Generative NPC platform (memory, emotion, EQ, body language) for 3D/strategy/2D; partners NetEase Games, LG U+, GTA5-related; plans open-source platform.
- BubbleAI — multi-million $ Pre-Seed (Aug 12); Luxtech + undisclosed HK-listed Web3 co. Web3 AIFi / trading copilot; off-chain intel + proprietary LLM analysis engine.
- Flower lands — $3.6M pre-seed (Aug 9); First Spark, Factorial, Betaworks, Pioneer. Decentralized/federated LLM training (FedGPT); privacy-preserving no direct data access.
- Rootly — $12M Series A (Aug 10); Renegade lead, Google Gradient, XYZ. 50+ integrations for incident mgmt (page, track, stakeholder comms, retros); AI root-cause assist.
- Anthropic — $100M from SK Telecom (Aug 14) for telecom-driven AI; follows May $450M from Google/Spark Capital et al.
- Voiceflow — $15M (Aug 16); OpenView lead; total $35M; valuation up 50% to $105M. Collaborative conversational Agent design→hand-off; LLM AI Builder for CS Agents.
- Global Illumination × OpenAI (Aug 17) — acquisition (see news); “open-source Minecraft”-style creative stack; whole team → ChatGPT core.
- ConverSight — $9M Series A (Aug 29) — LLM analytics self-serve stack (integrate→store→transform→analyze→report).
- Qualiti.ai — $6.5M seed (Aug 29); Sierra Ventures lead, Epic. AI software test automation without manual test authoring.
- Tavus — ~$18M Series A at $80M post (Aug 29); prior $6.1M seed (Sequoia, Lightspeed, Index); YC S21. Personalized AI avatar videos speaking each recipient’s name; ARR ~$1M → $2–3M expected this year.
- Modular — $100M Series A (Aug 30); General Catalyst lead; GV, SV Angel, Greylock. Unified AI infra; run TF/PyTorch models without rewrite; Mojo language claimed ~90× Python developer efficiency.
- AI21 Labs — $155M Series C (Aug 30); Alphabet/Google, NVIDIA et al.; cumulative $283M; $1.4B valuation. NLP apps (Wordtune rewrite lineage).
03 Disclaimer
Industry information compiled for research reference; figures as stated in Chinese primary sources for August 2023. Not investment advice. Charts/tables in the CN original should be attached on ingest.
CN images; attach on ingest.
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