Unique Research · Capital monthly · May 16, 2024
April 2024 AIGC financing — global overview, China vs. overseas, active investors, secondary-market color, and named deals. Methodology note and ~24 CN charts attach on ingest. Do not treat chart cells not stated in CN text as facts here.
Methodology
Traffic/product scope in the broader monthly series covers PC and mobile browser visits to AI product pages with monthly visits >10,000; Global / China / Overseas TOP50 rankings are by visit volume. This Capital edition focuses on financing events and secondary-market color. For research reference only — Unique Research accepts no legal liability for data or views; cite Unique Research when using.
01 · April snapshot
- Global scale AI products (monthly visits >10k) fell to 1,771, −3.38% MoM
- Global AIGC financing April: ¥3.13B, −89.6% vs March — no Anthropic-scale ~¥20B single check as prior month
- China share of global financing amount rose to 43.7% (+27.6 pp MoM)
- Largest April check globally: Germany conversational AI platform Parloa — ~€61.7M (~¥470M) Series B led by Altimeter Capital + 5 others (natural AI voice; phone/chatbot CS automation)
- China: Mobvoi (出门问问) listed on HKEX April 24 as Hong Kong’s “first AIGC stock”; raise >HK$300M; cornerstone investors Zhongguancun International Co. and Nanjing Jingkai Juzhi KeChuang Investment LP
1.1 Overseas April
Angel / individual investors featured in four U.S. seed rounds — Prime Intellect, Knostic, Prem Labs, Higgsfield AI — average ~¥6.253M per backer across those events.
1.2 China April
23 AIGC companies funded; 6 at ¥100M+ — Mobvoi, Haomo.AI (毫末智行), Moxian AI (墨芯人工智能), Muyan Zhiyu (沐言智语), MiniMax / FaceWall-related 面壁智能, Aishi Tech (爱诗科技). 12 at ¥10M+ including Wenda Group, Kuaizi Tech, RealAI (瑞莱智慧), Yingyue Chuangxiang, etc.
1.3 2024 YTD through April
- 2024 YTD AIGC financing ~¥63.64B, −18.13% vs prior-year ¥77.74B — but far more deals (186 vs 41)
- 2023 Jan–Apr companies >¥1B: OpenAI (¥69.66B), Anthropic (¥2.75B), Adept (¥2.38B) — 3 names
- 2024 Jan–Apr >¥1B: 9 names — China Moonshot (月之暗面) ¥7.1B, MiniMax ¥4.26B; U.S. Anthropic ¥21.51B, Lambda ¥2.47B, Genmo ¥2.13B, Glean ¥1.42B, Abridge ¥1.07B; Canada Cohere ¥3.55B; UK KAO Data ¥1.46B
02 · Global financing
2.3 Jan–Apr trend
Deal counts held ~40+ except as noted; amounts spiked Feb ¥23.052B and Mar ¥30.209B, then April plunged to ¥3.135B. 2024 monthly average amount ¥14.361B (lifted by large early-year checks). Avg ticket Jan–Apr: ¥1.25B / ¥5.49B / ¥7.19B / ¥0.77B per deal.
2.4 By country (Jan–Apr)
- U.S. ¥35.073B amount (#1) / 51 deals (~55% of China’s deal count)
- China ¥15.238B (#2) / 92 deals (#1 by count)
- Canada ¥4.189B / 3; UK ¥1.922B / 7; Korea ¥1.525B / 3
- Also active at smaller scale: Germany, France, Japan, Israel, Singapore, India, Egypt, Netherlands, Austria
03 · China financing
3.1 Active investors (Jan–Apr)
MiraclePlus (奇绩创坛) 10 deals (#1); GSR Ventures and Alibaba 3 each (#2). Sixteen names at 2 deals: Primavera (春华), Shunxi, Ameba, Hubble, Baidu Ventures, Sequoia China, Meitu, Huagai, Shengjing Jiacheng, Will Hunting (将门), Wang Huiwen, Zhipu AI, Yaotu, iFlytek, Ant Group, Zhuoyuan, etc.
3.2 Hot projects / trend
86 China companies financed YTD; 19 at ¥100M+. Amount leaders: Moonshot $1B, MiniMax $600M. Deal count rose then peaked in March; February amount led at ¥8.249B on Moonshot’s $1B disclosure.
04 · Overseas financing
4.1 Active investors (Jan–Apr)
Amazon ~¥2B lead by amount; NEA and a16z each >¥200M and 4 rounds; Deutsche Bank, Intuit >¥100M; Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, etc. in ¥6–7M band.
4.2 Hot projects / overseas trend
Overseas AIGC Jan–Apr ~¥48.719B. Board leaders in CN text: Anthropic ¥2.151B; Cohere ¥0.355B; Mistral AI ¥0.3B; plus Lambda, Genmo, KAO Data and others >¥100M.
Monthly overseas: Jan 42 deals / ¥6.969B; Feb 21 / ¥14.802B; Mar 14 / ¥25.251B (quarter high); Apr 17 / ¥1.768B.
05 · Secondary market (East Money)
AIGC concept index (Apr 30): 1,362.83, −5.56% MoM; turnover ¥643.8B; turnover ratio 55.37%. Top gainers cited: Xin’an Century (688201) 18.73 / +35.92%; USTC Sinovation (300520) 21.98 / +20.31%; Huashe Group 9.80 / +15.16%; Deerma 11.55 / +11.92%; Huaxin Yongdao (837592) 19.15 / +14.81%. Company blurbs for these names are in CN charts/text (crypto/security, data intelligence, survey-design, appliances, housing-fund IT) — attach charts on ingest.
06 · Named deals — China
- Muyan Zhiyu × Hillhouse, Mingshi — post-money ~$120M; pan-entertainment; Zhang Yueguang (ex-Alibaba entertainment; led viral “Miaoya Camera”); new product in R&D
- Yingyue Chuangxiang — multi-million-RMB angel (investors undisclosed); AI vision; first app Katacata Ai
- Miji Tech × Huagai, Qifu — family-education robots (soft/hard/cloud/AI); founded 2019
- MyTwins.ai × Will Hunting, Westlake Sci-Tech, Yongxi lead — AGI digital twins; multimodal from video/audio
- Moxiangjing × Weijia, Chen Liang, Wang Huiwen — LLM infra + character-chat app
- CHIMER AI — multi-hundred-thousand-RMB seed; fashion GenAI for brands/ODM/designers; LPs serve LVMH, Ralph Lauren, SHEIN
- Wenda Group × Zhongxinding — one-stop marketing for ~40M SMB merchants; digital ops / AI big data / AI unmanned livestream
- Wow Universe (UOVAMETA) × Alibaba, Lehua — multi-million-RMB strategic; Yuanlong Yatu (002878) subsidiary; AI + Web3
- Fabanyun × Hainan Maotian et al. — enterprise AI legal / risk platform (contracts, HR, tax, IP, equity)
- Super Zaizai × iFlytek — AI emotional companion; multimodal model + chip + App; AI+toy+IP; cotton-doll entry; >¥150B claimed ecosystem TAM; signed multi-million-follower IPs / multi-million-sales toy brands
- NieTa × Source Code, MiraclePlus et al. — founded Dec 2022; ACG co-creation community (Genshin fine-tunes etc.); CEO Hu Xiuhan (Kanjian Concept)
- Moxian AI × Ant lead, Shengjing Jiacheng — sparse NN AI chips cloud+edge
- MiniMax / FaceWall (面壁智能) × Primavera & Hubble lead; Shunxi, Zhihu (ZH / 02390) follow — open LLM infra / 10B+ train-finetune-infer
- Kuaizi Tech × GSR, Haizhu Chengfa, Minghui Yide, Hainan Bixin — ~¥50M B1; Unique Capital exclusive FA; FusionX content engine; “edit-shoot-cut-buy-manage”; claimed 50× video throughput; AI native apps (one-click film, script, deconstructor, etc.)
- RealAI × Shunxi et al. — founded Jul 2018 from Tsinghua AI Institute; 3rd-gen safe/reliable/controllable AI; full-stack AI safety
- Xuzhi Tech × Inno Angel, Tsinghua Alumni Seed — AI Agent digital-labor platform; “behavior creation” as asset
- Catalyst Plus × DeepPotential — AI-for-Science research aggregation / Copilot; ZJU + ex-Byte/Alibaba/Ant talent
- Miguo AI × Tianqi, Luoji Thinking — AI manga/animation capacity
- Ling Universe / Wuling Tech × 37 Interactive — founder Gu Jiawei (ex-Baidu AI HCI; ex-MSRA); Luka brand; prior SenseTime-led ¥100M; Luka in ~20 countries
- Haomo.AI × Jiuzhi Capital et al. — from Great Wall intelligent-driving unit; passenger AV + last-mile logistics
- Mobvoi IPO — founded 2012; GenAI + voice; Sequence Monkey multimodal (2023); Magic Sound Studio / DupDub, Qimiaoyuan digital human, Qimiaowen enterprise digital employee
- Aishi Tech × Ant lead — founded Apr 2023; CEO Wang Changhu (ex-ByteDance vision); PixVerse T2V (Jan 2024 web); monthly visits >1M; Feb aicpb.com growth #1; >10M videos generated
- Gege AI / Yinlü Shandao × Xi Venture — founded Aug 2022; sing-a-few-bars voice clone → virtual singing twin
06 · Named deals — Overseas
- SOAI × Archer $3M + XForce $2M — $5M institutional angel; AI companion social
- Higgsfield AI — Menlo, Charge, Bitkraft, K5, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Davidovs VC, angels; “Diffuse” selfie→personalized video characters + Prompt Builder
- Today — Sfermion & Big Brain lead; Web3 social sim; GenAI NPCs + no-code creator tools
- Prem Labs — angels; train/finetune GenAI on user-authorized data; on-prem sovereignty
- OpenAI × ARK Invest — Cathie Wood / Ark Venture Fund (est. Sep 2022) disclosed Apr 12 China time; AUM ~$30B firm; size/valuation undisclosed; she sold ~90% NVIDIA over five quarters into end-2023
- Simbian — $10M seed; Cota, Icon, Firebolt, Rain lead; Olivier Pomel, Pankaj Patel, Diogo Monica, Joe Sullivan follow; GenAI security “co-pilot” toward autonomous security
- GPU.net — India decentralized GPU infra; GenAI / metaverse / rendering / mining
- sapien.io — $5M seed; Primitive, Animoca, Ravikant Capital, YGG; gamified/blockchain human data labeling
- Mindverse × SquarePeg — Singapore; MindOS Studio + Mebot
- Udio — Apr 11 launch + $10M seed; a16z, Mike Krieger, Oriol Vinyals (Gemini lead) + music producers/investors
- Knostic — Shield, Pitango, DNX, Seedcamp, angels; need-to-know access control for LLMs
- AI Squared × Ansa, NEA et al. — low-code embed AI into existing apps
- Prime Intellect — CoinFund, Distributed Global, Compound, Collab+Currency, angels, Protocol Labs; decentralized co-owned AI ecosystem
- Airchat × Sam Altman — async voice/text/video rooms; accent-mimicking AI translation
- Perplexity AI — Daniel Gross lead; Druckenmiller, Garry Tan, Dylan Field, Jeff Bezos, NVIDIA GPU Ventures follow; founded Aug 2022 by Aravind Srinivas et al.; <40 staff; ~10M MAU; >1M app installs; >500M queries prior year; free + Pro (Gemini / GPT-4 / Claude 2.1 switch)
- Cognition × Founders Fund lead — Devin AI software engineer (full-stack, self-bugfix, train/finetune own models)
- Parloa × Altimeter lead; EQT Ventures, Newion, Senovo, Mosaic, La Famiglia Growth follow — conversational AI voice for CS bots
07 · Disclaimer
Unique Research is Unique Capital’s commercial-innovation research arm (new marketing / retail / experience; digitization of consumer, local life, healthcare, etc.). Limited by methods and data access, this report is market reference only; Unique Research bears no legal liability for data or opinions herein.
24 CN charts; attach on ingest.
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