Unique Research · Weekly AI Worldview · July 8, 2024
One week of global AI funding, events, and people moves. Charts/boards in CN source — attach on ingest (24 images).
Funding — China
- Enzyme Tech (酶有科技) — tens of millions RMB angel, Linear Capital lead; Qiji, Danen follow. Enzymatic DNA synthesis; AI-designed enzyme molecular machines to cut gene-synthesis cost vs chemistry. Founded Mar 2023.
- CreativeFitting (井英科技) — multi-million USD Pre-A+ from Baidu Group; Unique Capital as financial advisor. Behind overseas AI short-drama app Reel.AI, climbing entertainment charts.
- YconityAI — ¥6M Pre-A from Hanshi Investment. AI platform that spots redundant workflow steps and auto-generates code; founded late 2017.
Funding — overseas
- Dust (France) — $16M, Sequoia US lead. Ex-OpenAI engineer Stanislas Polu; custom enterprise AI bots; 5,000+ active users; ~$1M ARR; models from OpenAI/Google via Slack etc.; clients Qonto, Alan; expanding in U.S. (Watershed).
- Fluently — $2M seed (Pioneer Fund, SID Venture, angels). YC alums Stan Beliaev & Yurii Rebryk; AI spoken-English coach for near-native learners; MacOS-only for now (Apple Silicon); Chrome extension waitlist.
- Daydream — $50M seed, Forerunner & Index lead; GV, True Ventures. Fashion personalization; GenAI/ML/CV; 2,000+ brand partners incl. Net-A-Porter; team to ~35 by year-end; beta planned fall.
- Axelera AI — $68M Series B (record Europe fabless semi B). Invest-NL Deep Tech, EIC Fund, etc. Edge AI chips; Metis 12nm CMOS AIPU at 15 TOPS/W; incubating from Bitfury since 2021; multimodal LLM products next; NA/EU/ME markets.
- LeyLine (Seattle) — multi-million first round, Primavera Capital lead. AI game/animation production ecosystem; NLP/CG/finance founding mix.
- Quantum Rise (Chicago) — $15M seed. “Consulting 2.0” AI automation for firms like dunnhumby; founder Alex Kelleher.
Events — China
- UBTECH × FAW-Volkswagen — Walker S humanoid into Qingdao smart factory for bolt tightening, part install, transfer; 1.7m, 41 servo joints, full sensing.
- Tencent Cloud Xingmai Network 2.0 — large-scale AI networking; sync tasks to ~40s; training cycles to ~40 days; communication share ~6%; load ~90%; 400Gbps NIC + TiTa + TCCL; MoE training network +30%, efficiency +10%.
- Tencent TransAgents — AI translation stack (NLP, DL, speech) for daily-to-professional multilingual use.
Events — overseas
- SoftBank — first FX bond since 2021; ~$1.86B ($900M USD bonds + €900M euro bonds) for debt paydown and AI bets. Masayoshi Son: ready to “go all-in on AI, win or lose.”
- SK Group — SK Hynix to invest ₩103 trillion (~$74.8B) through 2028 in AI and chips; ₩80T funding secured by 2026; streamline 175+ subsidiaries; HBM, AI data centers, personalized AI services. Chair Chey Tae-won on proactive change.
- Phil Schiller (longtime Apple exec) to join OpenAI board as observer (no vote) — same informational seat style as Microsoft; follows ChatGPT-on-Apple / Apple Intelligence deal.
- Benchmark raising Fund 11 (~$425M target, possibly $500M+), AI-focused “Benchmark 1”; ~30 early bets; Miles Grimshaw exiting to Thrive.
- Character.AI funding squeeze; exploring sale/IP+compute deals with Google, Meta, etc.; once valued $5B+; app downloads surged since May 2023.
- TikTok Genie AI chatbot for Western markets — live Q&A; builds on Philippines Tako experiment; trademark filed in U.S. in May.
People
- Adept — after CEO David Luan joined Amazon AGI, eng lead Zach Brock named CEO; focus “agentic AI solutions”; $350M Series B, $1B valuation history.
- Tencent AI Lab — Jiang Jie (Group VP, Hunyuan) succeeds Zhengyou Zhang, who focuses on Robotics X.
- Xin Tong leaves Microsoft Research Asia after 25 years (graphics; XBOX / Windows 3D print / Direct3D / SIGGRAPH).
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