--- title: "Weekly AI Worldview | Amazon→Anthropic Another $2.75B; Samsung AGI Compute Lab; Zuckerberg Recruiting Emails" author: "Unique Research" sourcePublication: "Unique Research (FFCAP English library)" originalPublishedAt: "2024-04-01T16:30:00+08:00" canonical: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240401a06e5u00" source: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240401a06e5u00" language: "en" cnSourceUrl: "https://view.inews.qq.com/a/20240401A06E5U00" --- # Weekly AI Worldview | Amazon→Anthropic Another $2.75B; Samsung AGI Compute Lab; Zuckerberg Recruiting Emails _Unique Research · Weekly AI Worldview · April 1, 2024_ One week of global AI funding, events, and people moves. CN images — attach on ingest (25). ## This week’s headlines - **Funding:** Tavus $18M; Borderless AI $27M; XSquare multi-million RMB angel; Amazon another **$2.75B** into Anthropic (full $4B commitment); Zhipu into Qingcheng Jizhi; Yun Kuaifan Pre-A+; Hume AI $50M B - **Events:** Apple exploring Baidu AI for China; Samsung AGI Computing Lab; Tencent×Tsinghua×HKUST Follow-Your-Click; Saudi ~$40B AI push; Korean AI medtech into Middle East; Caiyue F1 finance multimodal; NVIDIA×Hippocratic AI nurse; BBC considering private LLM; Databricks acquires Lilac AI; ByteDance “Hua Lu” AI character app; Samsung MemCon2024 memory; Adobe Firefly Services; Intel Beijing AI PC launch; Musk expands Grok to more X paid users; Alimama LMA + three plans; OpenAI VoiceEngine - **People:** Zuckerberg personally emails DeepMind talent; Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque resigns; Andrew Ng on AI Agents at Sequoia AI Ascent ## Funding - **Tavus — $18M Series A.** Generative-AI personalized video startup. Platform turns simple text into realistic video for large-scale 1:1 customer/user interaction. Products include Phoenix model and Tavus developer platform. Customers include Salesforce and Meta. (Tavus) - **Borderless AI — $27M strategic.** Toronto startup using GenAI to transform team onboarding and payroll. First HR-industry AI agent Alberni in **170** languages, mobile, conversational help for HR problems. Led by Susquehanna and Aglaé Ventures; funds expand into untapped markets and deepen the AI product suite. (Borderless AI) - **XSquare — multi-million RMB angel.** “General embodied foundation model” startup aiming for a universal brain–cerebellum system for robots — end-to-end from perception to action. Angel led by Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group (联想之星) and JOY Capital (九合创投); amount tens of millions RMB. Team built tech architecture and early model training in under three months. Plans initial commercialization in 3–5 years on both B and C. (XSquare) - **Amazon → Anthropic another $2.75B.** On **March 28**, Amazon added **$2.75B**, completing its **$4B** total commitment — among the largest generative-AI financings. Anthropic founded in San Francisco in **2021** by core members of OpenAI’s original ChatGPT research team. Per agreement, Anthropic will serve GenAI customers via AWS and use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips. Amazon’s first **$1.25B** bought a minority stake with right to top up to $4B. Anthropic will support Amazon Bedrock and jointly advance GenAI safety, cut illegal content, and build a stable, transparent AI ecosystem. (Amazon) - **Zhipu AI into Qingcheng Jizhi (清程极智).** Zhipu participated in Qingcheng Jizhi’s first round at **2.1673%** ownership. Qingcheng is a Tsinghua-lineage AI Infra systems-software company building efficient AI system software to empower domestic compute and support foundation-model industry. Zhipu has invested in **10+** AI-chain companies (model-layer, smart legal, pharma sales, etc.) — building models while acting like a VC, learning from Altman/OpenAI. CEO Zhang Peng: work with upstream/downstream partners, developer community, and academia for China’s AI future. (Zhipu AI) - **Yun Kuaifan Tech (云快反科技) — Pre-A+ tens of millions RMB.** Guangdong apparel vertical integrated supply-chain firm; Pre-A+ led by Tianze Jinniu Capital; A round in progress. Applies AIGC to digital printing so fast-fashion brands raise originality — AI generates creative patterns matching customer need and quickly produces digital-print fabric; design→production→fabric delivery within **48 hours**. Revenue near **¥50M**, mainly fabric sales and order share. Plans to expand into finished garments toward a fuller industry-internet platform. (Guangdong Yun Kuaifan) - **Hume AI — $50M Series B.** Shipped EVI, claimed world’s first empathic AI voice interface — uses tone to know when the user has finished speaking, predict preferences, and optimize satisfaction over time. B round led by EQT Ventures. Founded by Dr. Alan Cowen (ex-Google researcher/scientist; semantic-space theory). Cowen: AI needs emotion; interface future is voice-based. Sequoia partner Pack Grady at AI Ascent 2024: one of AI’s biggest opportunities is replacing services with software because AI now has human-like interaction. (Hume AI) ## Events - **Apple exploring Baidu AI for China.** Apple seeking a local GenAI provider in China; discussions on using Baidu AI on devices. Baidu founder Robin Li: ERNIE already surpasses GPT-4 on Chinese; users past **100 million**. Baidu 2023 revenue **¥134.598B** (+9% YoY); net profit attributable **¥28.7B** (+39%). AI is a new growth engine; Baidu Core revenue **¥103.465B** (+38%). Baidu will keep investing in AI; GenAI and foundation-model businesses expected to add more incremental revenue in 2024. (WSJ) - **Samsung Electronics founds AGI Computing Lab.** Focused on next-gen AI chips to cut power and cost for future AGI processing. Lab will first develop chips for LLMs and re-examine every aspect of chip architecture. Co-CEO Dong Hyuk Woo to lead. Though behind SK Hynix in HBM, Samsung keeps chasing and seeks AI cooperation with Korean and other companies. (Samsung Semiconductor) - **Tencent × Tsinghua × HKUST — Follow-Your-Click** image-to-video model. (Tencent / research partners) - **Saudi ~$40B AI push toward global AI hub.** Plans ~**$40B** into AI including chipmakers and large data centers. PIF representatives discussing potential partnerships with firms such as a16z. PIF President Yasir Al-Rumayyan (25+ years finance; PIF president since 2015) runs all SWF operations. PIF AUM **$925B**; leadership says Saudi is ready to be an AI hub. (NYT) - **Korean AI medtech into Middle East.** Korean device makers active at Arab Health, Medlab Middle East, Dubai AEEDC — promoting tech and signing export contracts. Waycen signed strategic sales with MegaMind to expand AI GI/colonoscopy software WAYMED Endo and AI respiratory self-screen WAYMED Cough into the Middle East. Korean pavilion at Arab Health showed 11 companies; contracts valued **$31.7M**. Solco subsidiary at Medlab Middle East 2024 signed **$1.6M**. (Korea Biomed) - **Caiyue F1 — China’s first 100B-param multimodal finance model.** Jiemian Cailianshe with StepFun (阶跃星辰) shipped Caiyue F1, China’s first hundred-billion-parameter multimodal finance foundation model. Pretrained on Cailianshe’s trillion-scale finance corpus; strong image/chart understanding; aimed at “AI+” for smart ops, risk, advisory, marketing, CS. Focus: intelligent advisory, research, and investor education to lift financial-institution productivity. (Global Developer Pioneer Conference) - **NVIDIA × Hippocratic AI — AI medical assistants.** Partnering on AI nurses at **$9/hour**, far below typical nurse wages. GenAI simulates human-nurse responses on video calls and feeds attending physicians. Hippocratic focuses on Health General Intelligence (HGI); SenseAI has emotional intelligence for patient engagement. Seed + Series A raised multi-million $; valuation **$500M**. Product Polaris similar to human nurses on attitude and safety — better in some aspects; Phase 3 testing with clinicians/partners. Company has raised **$120M** for LLM safety testing and product R&D. (NVIDIA) - **BBC considering training a private LLM.** Evaluating building/training its own AI model on text archives to support production; considering unilateral or cooperative arrangements and bias issues. Spokesperson: any such model’s output would be for BBC only. FT reported BBC negotiating with tech firms on selling archive access; BBC denied any deal using its archives to train LLMs for commercial GenAI tools. (FT) - **Databricks acquires Lilac AI.** Lilac provides scalable, user-friendly tools for scientists to search, cluster, and analyze text datasets. Post-deal, Lilac tech integrates into Databricks to help customers use enterprise data to accelerate production-quality GenAI apps. CEO Ali Ghodsi: Databricks is the preferred vendor for firms training LLMs/AI on private data. Lilac addresses exploring/understanding unstructured text in the GenAI era via intuitive UI and AI-enhanced interaction. (Databricks) - **ByteDance ships AI character-interaction app; poaching Baidu/Alibaba talent.** App “Hua Lu (话炉)” from Flow under Product R&D & Engineering — four lines: AI education, international, community, Doubao. Flow >**100** people, still hiring heavily including leader roles. Many ERNIE Bot and Alibaba Cloud staff have joined; intensity high — default **6 days/week**, sometimes Sunday overtime. (ByteDance) - **Samsung at MemCon2024 — next-gen memory.** Showed CXL and HBM solutions. CXL connects CPU/GPU/storage semiconductors for speed and capacity; HBM stacks DRAM vertically for high bandwidth. Plans volume production of 5th-gen HBM and **128GB** DDR5. MemCon gathers AI memory solutions; attendees included Samsung, SK Hynix, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Meta, AMD. (Samsung) - **Adobe Firefly Services at Summit 2024.** Enterprise custom/fine-tune suite with **20+** GenAI and creative APIs. Enterprises can customize/fine-tune on their own data; generated content copyright-protected for commercial scenes. Features: model fine-tune, API embed into daily tools, copyrighted outputs. Simple text-to-image with visual data controls. Video and audio editing coming soon to simplify multimedia workflows. (Adobe) - **Intel Beijing commercial client AI PC launch (Mar 26).** Driving commercial AI PC as new-quality productivity tools for the AI+ era. AI PC integrates CPU/GPU/NPU for high performance at low power and reshapes PC experience. VP & China GM Wang Zhicong: Core Ultra marks PCs fully entering the AI era. Core Ultra–based vPro combines AI with commercial productivity, security, manageability, and stability. AI PC Acceleration Program adds two initiatives: AI PC Developer Program and IHV participation. (Intel) - **Musk: Grok for more X paid users.** After open-sourcing Grok LLM, X will offer Grok chatbot to more paid users to compete with ChatGPT and Claude — possibly to grow users as X usage softens. Ad conflicts may also hurt revenue; AI chatbot access may keep users from leaving. Grok answers questions other bots often refuse, with a “rebellious” persona, and has real-time X data competitors lack — though if X loses users that data’s value may fall. (X) - **Alimama “LMA + flagship products + three plans” (Mar 25).** “1+1+3” innovation model: LMA large-model tech, revolutionary products, and three merchant-support plans to build a new Taobao growth flywheel. LMA precisely understands consumer behavior/interest and locks target audiences for product design and marketing. New products use paid traffic to leverage organic traffic and operate global traffic as a Taobao growth engine. Three plans: New-Quality New Brands, New-Quality Good Goods, and New Merchant Cultivation — AI helping merchants catch consumption dividends. (Alimama) - **OpenAI VoiceEngine (Mar 30).** Generates natural speech from **15 seconds** of audio plus text. Scenes: children’s education, translation, community service, speech therapy; tech cases with select partners. In development since late 2022; now powers TTS API and ChatGPT read-aloud preset voices; trained on licensed and public data. OpenAI discussing responsible deployment of synthetic voice and exploring watermarks/controls against abuse; has a “Preparedness” team and published a Preparedness Framework. (OpenAI) ## People - **Zuckerberg personally emails DeepMind talent.** Meta’s CEO is intensifying AI hiring — personally writing emails to recruit AI researchers from Google DeepMind. Meta also relaxed compensation policy, offering jobs without interviews in some cases. Goal: make Meta a heavyweight AI player; plan >**340,000** NVIDIA H100 GPUs by end of **2024**. Meta champions open-source AI; shipped largely open Llama 2 in July last year. Zuckerberg: AI will be the largest 2024 investment area in engineering and compute. (Firstpost) - **Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque resigns.** Co-founder/CEO stepped down, adding pressure on the troubled UK AI startup after executive departures and funding stress. Mostaque was unhappy with company direction. Core members have left at striking turnover. Outside speculation points to investor or board pressure; Mostaque’s concerns about concentrated power in AI are worth reflecting on. (Forbes) - **Andrew Ng on AI Agents (Sequoia AI Ascent).** Discussed agent workflows and AI applications. Agent workflows stress iteration and dialogue; four mainstream design patterns, developing fast with potential to raise AI capability. Ng: future agent capability will expand greatly — we must learn to delegate tasks to agents and wait patiently for results. Multi-agent collaboration handles complex problems, lifts performance, expands scenes. Multi-agent debate lets AIs argue with each other to improve. Fast token generation speeds iteration and results. (Sequoia AI Ascent) _Editors: Ranran, Qiuping · Proof: Qiuping_ — END — --- Editorial English edition published on UniqueCapital: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240401a06e5u00 On-site reading page: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240401a06e5u00