Unique Research · Weekly AI Worldview · April 29, 2024
One week of funding, events, and people. Charts attach on ingest (19 images).
Funding
- Aishi Tech (爱诗科技) — over ¥100M Series A2, Ant Group lead; Guangyuan Capital sole FA. Founded Apr 2023; AI video-generation models and apps; CEO Wang Changhu (ex-ByteDance vision lead). Jan 2024 launched PixVerse web (text-to-video); funds model iteration, team, and industry applications. (Aishi Tech)
- Exowatt — $20M seed from Sam Altman with a16z and Atomic. Modular solar energy conversion/storage aiming at ~$0.01/kWh to address AI’s power hunger. (WSJ)
- Perplexity AI — Apr 24, $62.7M; valuation $1.04B. Backers include Daniel Gross, NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos. NL search / multi-layer Q&A; web + iOS; MAU past 2M in months. (Perplexity)
- OpenAI Startup Fund — new $15M into SPV “OpenAI Startup Fund SPV II, LP”; Ian Hathaway manager & sole partner; tech-independent affiliate focusing on education, legal, science AI startups. Cumulative commitments ~$175M; portfolio 10+ companies including Descript (val >$553M). (OpenAI Startup Fund)
Events
- Alibaba Cloud × Meta Llama 3 — ModelScope listed all 4 variants immediately; Bailian first in China with limited-time free train / deploy / inference for Llama 3 (8B and 70B). One-click train/deploy/infer; “most open cloud in the AI era.” (Alibaba Cloud)
- G42 × Qualcomm — Apr 22; Core 42 to integrate Qualcomm Cloud AI 100 into Condor AI platform for data-center AI acceleration. (G42)
- SoftBank GenAI R&D — plan ¥150B (~JPY 150B) by end-2025 to lift compute tens of times; already spent ¥20B in 2023 on infra; buy NVIDIA GPUs (own use + possible rental). LLM path: 390B-param model in 2024; Japanese-dedicated ~1T-param model from 2025. (Nikkei)
- Moonshot / Yang Zhilin — reports that CEO Yang Zhilin cashed out tens of millions of USD after fundraising; company denied specific amounts and said employee incentives are in place. Feb round: $1B led by Alibaba, with Sequoia China, Xiaohongshu, Meituan; valuation >$2.5B after prior large rounds. Flagship Kimi Chat known for long-context; spawned secondary-market “Kimi concept” names. (Moonshot)
- FPT × NVIDIA — Apr 23, $200M AI factory in Vietnam; AI R&D for global services; auto and digital transformation focus. Jensen Huang flags Vietnam talent/infra investment; follows NVIDIA–Telkom AI center in Central Java. (FPT)
- NVIDIA acquires Run:ai — Israeli GPU orchestration / AI workload platform; price not disclosed; reports put deal at $700M–$1B (Forbes). Partner since 2020; deepens NVIDIA AI infra stack. (NVIDIA & Forbes)
- Apple OpenELM — open-source on-device LLM family on Hugging Face: 270M / 450M / 1.1B / 3B params; CoreNet training; offline on phone/tablet/PC. (Apple)
- SenseTime SenseNova 5.0 (日日新) — ~600B params; claims parity/beats vs GPT-4 Turbo and Llama-3 on several axes; MMBench multimodal #1; partners Kingsoft Office, Xiaomi. 2023 revenue ¥3.4B; GenAI project revenue +200%, share 34.8%. (SenseTime)
- Webflow acquires Intellimize — AI web personalization / CRO; no-code personalized sites; SenseAI co-creation invite for PMs/devs. (Webflow)
- NVIDIA → OpenAI DGX H200 — first DGX H200 delivered; exclusive NVLink Switch with Foxconn; Foxconn cloud/AI server upside; GB200 AI server also highlighted. (OpenAI)
- Tencent × Toyota — 2024 Beijing Auto Show; Tencent SVP / CSIG CEO Tang Daosheng: deepen smart-car collab (AI models, cloud, big data; software-defined vehicle); WeChat ecosystem to link daily life with Toyota mobility. (2024 Beijing Auto Show)
- DeepL Write Pro — AI writing assistant (grammar + live word/style/tone); EN + DE now, more languages later; office-suite integrations; TLS + text deletion; €10/mo. (DeepL)
- Astribot S1 (星尘智能) — home-care robot targeting 2024 market; near-human ops; large models + soft/hard stack; team from Tencent, Google, UBTECH. (Astribot)
- Tsinghua AI College — founded Apr 27 (113th anniversary); first dean Turing Award winner Andrew Yao (Yao Qizhi); talent + core tech + industry bridges; forum and exhibit on cross-AI research. (Tsinghua)
People
- Jensen Huang (Cadence Silicon Valley 2024): humanoid robots will go mainstream; manufacturing cost could fall to $10k–$20k (cheap-car range); AI + accelerated computing as efficiency levers. Also GTC themes on AI, robotics, data-driven methods, and empowering talent. (Cadence SV 2024)
- Sam Altman (Stanford Enterprise Thought Leaders): next models more powerful; OpenAI mission AGI; AI startups still need business fundamentals; AI for education, disease, entertainment, space; society adapts fast. (OpenAI)
- Tim McDonough — named CMO of Automation Anywhere (Apr 23); 20+ years; ex-Intel VP/CMO for AI & data center (~$14B+ unit transformation); joins as GenAI process automation accelerates. (Automation Anywhere)
— END —