---
title: "Weekly AI Worldview | ModelBest Multi-$100M; Microsoft £2.5B London AI + $2.9B Japan; Andrew Ng to Amazon Board"
author: "Unique Research"
sourcePublication: "Unique Research (FFCAP English library)"
originalPublishedAt: "2024-04-15T16:45:00+08:00"
canonical: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240415a06mxf00"
source: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240415a06mxf00"
language: "en"
cnSourceUrl: "https://view.inews.qq.com/a/20240415A06MXF00"
---

# Weekly AI Worldview | ModelBest Multi-$100M; Microsoft £2.5B London AI + $2.9B Japan; Andrew Ng to Amazon Board

_Unique Research · Weekly AI Worldview · April 15, 2024_

One week of global AI funding, events, and people. Charts attach on ingest (20 images).

## This week’s headlines

**Funding** — MyTwins.ai multi-¥10M angel; NieTa (捏Ta) multi-¥10M; ModelBest (面壁智能) multi-$100M-RMB round with Primavera and Huawei Hubble.

**Events** — Microsoft £2.5B UK / London AI center; Tencent Cloud AIGC storage upgrade; Meta Llama 3 (~140B); Gemini 1.5 Pro upgrade; Microsoft $2.9B Japan; Meta 5nm AI chip; CodeFuse image-to-code; GPT-4 Turbo Vision API; Infosys × Intel; Google Axion; ARK into OpenAI; Adobe video training data; Sony BRC-AM7; Huawei MateBook X Pro + Pangu.

**People** — Andrew Ng joins Amazon board; Robin Li on closed-source Wenxin; Jordan Hoffman to lead Microsoft consumer AI London center.

## Funding

-   **MyTwins.ai** — multi-¥10M angel led jointly by Will Hunting Ventures (将门创投), Yongxi Asset (永禧资产), and Westlake Sci-Tech Venture (西湖科创投); Yuanqi Capital (元启资本) exclusive FA. General AI for personal digital twins — promotion, communication, and service upgrades. Self-developed multimodal AI enables real dialogue and motion; personalized twins plus industry foundation-model builds. Partnered with known streamers to lift efficiency and live duration; targeting education, healthcare, finance, marketing. Digital twins as consumer “virtual partners.” (MyTwins.ai)
-   **NieTa (捏Ta)** — angel + Pre-A totaling over ¥10M, backed by Source Code Capital (源码资本) and MiraclePlus (奇绩创坛). Funds for model optimization, multimodal features, and social play. AIGC character-creation platform; team from senior internet backgrounds (incl. AIDXL). New app to upgrade community for multi-person, multi-character, multimodal interactive story creation and sharing. (NieTa)
-   **ModelBest (面壁智能)** — new multi-$100M-RMB (数亿) round led by Primavera Capital (春华创投) and Huawei Hubble (华为哈勃), with Beijing AI Industry Investment Fund and others; Zhihu (知乎) also added. Funds for talent, foundation-model compute/data base, and application rollout. Core team from Tsinghua NLP Lab; previously shipped Chinese LLM CPM-1. Focused on AGI; landed in finance, education, government. Primavera: ModelBest shows forward vision and a full tech stack; strong data and talent base for foundation-model progress. (ModelBest)

## Events

-   **Microsoft — £2.5B UK / London AI center** — New London AI center led by **Jordan Hoffman** to advance consumer AI products and research and compete for talent, tapping the UK AI ecosystem. Over the next three years Microsoft plans to invest **£2.5B** in the UK to expand data centers and train AI workforce skills. May intensify talent competition with Google DeepMind and peers; Microsoft is confident the center can attract and grow talent. (Microsoft)
-   **Tencent Cloud AIGC storage upgrade** — Full upgrade of AIGC-scene cloud storage: large-model data cleaning and training efficiency roughly doubled / time halved. Stack: object storage COS, high-performance parallel file storage CFS Turbo, data accelerator GooseFS, and Cloud Infinite (CI). COS supports hundred-EB scale with efficient public-net ingest. CFS Turbo after optimization: aggregate R/W throughput at TiB/s class; metadata performance at million OPS. MetaInsight product for multimodal data search. Storage evolving toward intelligent storage and data applications. (Tencent Cloud)
-   **Meta Llama 3 (~140B)** — Meta preparing next-gen foundation model Llama 3 at roughly **140B** parameters — high performance with cost efficiency for SMEs and individual developers. Series history: LLaMA open-sourced Feb last year; Llama 2 optimized for commercial use after ~2T tokens training and ~1M human-annotation fine-tunes — among the most widely used open GenAI models. Llama 3 expected to further push tech and applications. (Meta)
-   **Google Gemini 1.5 Pro upgrade** — Auto movie-review writing and multimodal understanding; **1M**\-token context; available in **180+** countries/regions. Google AI Studio free trial with Chinese prompt support. Gemini API stability and output quality improved. (Google)
-   **Microsoft — $2.9B Japan** — Up to **$2.9B** into Japan to expand data centers and introduce advanced semiconductor tech; strengthen domestic management/protection of personal and confidential data. With OpenAI, plans to offer ChatGPT foundation tech in Japan and set up a dedicated research base for robotics. Japan market ranks after U.S. and China; GenAI market projected to reach **¥30T JPY** by 2030. (Microsoft) _Note: CN title summarized as “$2.5B Japan”; body states $2.9B — body figure used._
-   **Meta 5nm AI chip** — Developing AI chips via TSMC 5nm to cut external-supplier dependence; compute and memory bandwidth more than double. Shifting toward AI services with surging compute need; plans **$35B** AI infrastructure investment; previously bought hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA H100s for recommendation and GenAI. (Meta)
-   **Ant Group CodeFuse — image-to-code** — Intelligent R&D platform CodeFuse ships “image-to-code” so front-end engineers generate code from product design mockups in one click (internal beta). Already in daily R&D: half of engineers adopt weekly; **10%** of new code AI-generated; adoption rate **30%**, rising to **50%** in unit-test scenes. Built on Ant’s Ling (百灵) foundation model; covers full R&D chain. (Ant Group)
-   **OpenAI GPT-4 Turbo Vision API** — Vision in GPT-4 Turbo API: image classification, detection, data conversion, and related ops — turning images, labels, symbols into structured data. Training data updated through **December 2023**; context up to **128K** tokens. (OpenAI)
-   **Infosys × Intel** — April 10, 2024 deepen strategic partnership around Infosys Topaz platform integrating Intel-based solutions to help clients embed GenAI into operations. (Infosys)
-   **Google Axion AI CPU** — Arm-based high-performance CPU for data-center AI needs; aims to reduce dependence on NVIDIA and Amazon and raise AI-market competitiveness. Claims better performance than current Arm and x86 instances; also improving TPU chips. Plan to integrate Axion into Google Cloud. (Google)
-   **ARK Invest into OpenAI** — Cathie Wood’s ARK disclosed its **$54M** venture fund holds OpenAI shares; OpenAI seen at the AI frontier. Via ARK closed-end fund framework that also holds SpaceX, Epic Games, etc. OpenAI already heavily backed by Microsoft; valuation cited at **$86B**. (ARK)
-   **Adobe video training data** — Pushing video-generation R&D; offering photographers/artists **$120** compensation for high-quality video used to train AI models; more detail later this year. Also buys stills when library is short, with contributor rates from **$0.06–$0.16**. (Bloomberg)
-   **Sony BRC-AM7** — April 11 AI auto-framing flagship PTZ camera: subject recognition and smooth auto-tracking; 20× optical zoom; 4K 60P; works with Sony imaging systems for meetings, broadcast, live events, sports. Planned launch early **2025**. (Sony)
-   **Huawei MateBook X Pro + Pangu** — April 11 new MateBook X Pro with Pangu foundation model; thin magnesium-alloy body; Intel Core Ultra 9 + Arc GPU; **40W** performance release. AI summary, AI minutes, voice input, AI subtitles; first NPU-driven AI effects with Wondershare Filmora (万兴喵影); WPS AI tools (smart layout, conversational tables, mind-map→PPT); Super Device multi-device synergy. (Huawei)

## People

-   **Andrew Ng (吴恩达) joins Amazon board** — April 11 Amazon announced Ng joining the board; Judy McGrath will not continue as director — a signal of business pivot. Despite heavy video/music investment, McGrath not standing for the next board may imply adjustments; Amazon has already cut hundreds of roles and scaled back Prime Video. To stay tech-leading, Amazon is increasing AI investment; Ng’s experience is expected to help. (Amazon)
-   **Robin Li (李彦宏) on closed-source Wenxin** — In a recent internal talk, Li first addressed why Wenxin stays closed: open models attract developers, but closed models will keep leading technically; closed mode concentrates compute and talent for better cost control and performance; at equal params closed models perform better. For AI startups he argued “dual-wheel drive” is not ideal — it can scatter resources and hurt core competitiveness. (Tencent News Frontline)
-   **Microsoft consumer AI + Jordan Hoffman** — Microsoft forming a new consumer AI unit with a London center led by Jordan Hoffman (ex-Inflection AI; Inflection founded by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman). New hiring to follow for language models plus related infra and tools. (Microsoft)

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Editorial English edition published on UniqueCapital: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240415a06mxf00
On-site reading page: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240415a06mxf00