---
title: "Weekly AI Worldview | Baichuan Raises ¥5B Series A; OpenAI Starts SearchGPT Beta; Nvidia Preps China-Market Chips"
author: "Unique Research"
sourcePublication: "Unique Research (FFCAP English library)"
originalPublishedAt: "2024-07-29T16:00:00+08:00"
canonical: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240729a05i5600"
source: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240729a05i5600"
language: "en"
cnSourceUrl: "https://view.inews.qq.com/a/20240729A05I5600"
---

# Weekly AI Worldview | Baichuan Raises ¥5B Series A; OpenAI Starts SearchGPT Beta; Nvidia Preps China-Market Chips

_Unique Research · Company / Weekly digest · July 29, 2024_

## China funding

**SiliconFlow (硅基流动)** — AI infra (ex-OneFlow founder Yuan Jinhui); **~¥100M angel+** with Huawei Hubble, Zhipu-related Beijing Zhipu Huazhang, 360’s Beijing Qihu. SiliconLLM / OneDiff inference + SiliconCloud. Prior ¥50M angel (Jan 2024). Founded Aug 2023.

**Wen Xiaobai (问小白)** under Yuanshi Tech — multimodal QA; **$32M seed** (Matrix, Redpoint, Kuaishou co-founder Su Hua). Voice; first-token latency avg <2.3s; MoE self-built models since H1 2023.

**Baichuan Intelligence (百川智能)** — **¥5B Series A**; Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi + top VCs; Beijing/Shanghai AI industry funds, Shenzhen Capital Group, etc. Next: Series B at **¥20B** valuation. 12 models shipped; AI assistant “Baixiaoying” (May); medical focus — Baichuan 3 beats GPT-4 on multiple medical evals; L0–L5 AI-medicine ladder.

**Xianglu Tech (橡鹿科技)** — AI cooking robots; **~¥200M** strategic from JD + full partnership; expand factories (second base north of Yangtze); next-gen robot targeted 2025.

**Whale Robot (鲸鱼机器人)** — AI Robot+Edu; **\>¥100M** 7th round (Shanghai Sports Industry Fund et al.); ages 3–22 product lines; 30+ countries; >500k units/year.

## Overseas funding

**Thoughtful AI** — healthcare RCM agents (CAM/EVA/PHIL); **$20M Series A** led by Drive Capital (Nick Solaro), TriplePoint. Claims, eligibility, payment tracking.

**Cohere** — **$500M Series D** (Jul 22) led by PSP Investments; Cisco, Fujitsu, AMD Ventures, EDC; valuation **$5.5B**; ARR ~$35M; headcount to ~2× this year.

**Harvey** — legal AI; **$100M Series C** led by GV; OpenAI, KP, Sequoia, Elad Gil, SV Angel; valuation **$1.5B**; ARR ×3 in ~6 months; team ×2.

**Gumloop** — no-code AI automation; **$3.1M seed** led by First Round; YC W24 + angel founders.

**Lakera** — **$20M Series A** led by Atomico; Citi Ventures, Dropbox; Lakera Guard API firewall vs. prompt injection.

**Reworkd** — web scraping/extraction; **$2.75M seed** (Paul Graham, AI Grant, SV Angel); +$1.25M pre-seed = $4M total.

## Products & events

**Baidu Cloud “Zhijin”** — LLM stack for finance innovation.

**WPS AI “AI伴写”** — companion writing.

**AiShi / PixVerse V2** — video-gen upgrade.

**Korea** forms AI Autonomous Manufacturing Alliance.

**Nvidia** preparing flagship AI chip tailored for China market; **Samsung HBM3** for China market passes Nvidia quality tests.

**Meta Llama 3.1 405B** — largest recent open LM.

**OpenAI SearchGPT** beta with publisher partnerships for authoritative answers.

**ElevenLabs Turbo V2.5** TTS.

## People

**Xing Jun** (ex-miHoYo Inverse Entropy research lead) — Shanghai Bantu Tech, AI virtual-human games.

**Mark Zuckerberg** — wants Meta as “the Linux of AI.”

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Editorial English edition published on UniqueCapital: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240729a05i5600
On-site reading page: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240729a05i5600