---
title: "Weekly AI Worldview | 01.AI Raises Hundreds of Millions; Cohere $500M at $5.5B; OpenAI Co-founder Joins Anthropic"
author: "Unique Research"
sourcePublication: "Unique Research (FFCAP English library)"
originalPublishedAt: "2024-08-12T16:50:00+08:00"
canonical: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240812a06bi600"
source: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240812a06bi600"
language: "en"
cnSourceUrl: "https://view.inews.qq.com/a/20240812A06BI600"
---

# Weekly AI Worldview | 01.AI Raises Hundreds of Millions; Cohere $500M at $5.5B; OpenAI Co-founder Joins Anthropic

_Unique Research · Company / Weekly digest · August 12, 2024_

## China funding

**01.AI (零一万物)** — LLM firm founded by Kai-Fu Lee closes a **hundreds-of-millions-of-USD** round with international strategic investors and a Southeast Asia consortium; details undisclosed. Team from Google, Microsoft, IBM, Baidu.

**Yida Tech / Easyship Digital Employees (壹沓科技)** — digital-employee robots; **B+** led by CDH VGC, with Xinshang Capital; Index Capital FA. Focus manufacturing, logistics, wholesale/retail; six hyper-automation cores + LLM digital-employee platform. (CEO Bian Xiaoyu)

**Metaso / Mita Tech (秘塔科技)** — **\>¥100M** round led by Ant Group, Lightspeed China follows; post-money ~**$150M** (LatePost). Founder Min Kerui (ex-Boson Data, acquired by Ant 2015); products include legal AI translation, writing tools, and search.

**Integer Intelligence (整数智能)** — AI data services; **tens of millions RMB A** led by FreeS Fund, with Oufang Angel. MooreData platform; 1,000+ clients; 4D labeling + multimodal datasets for AD / genAI / embodied AI.

**Fxiaoke (纷享销客)** — CRM; additional **$75M** despite soft SaaS market.

## Overseas funding

**Neon** — AI/serverless Postgres; **$25.6M** strategic from Microsoft M12.

**Cohere** — Canada enterprise LLM; **$500M Series D at $5.5B**; backers include Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures, Fujitsu (joint-dev for Japan). Cumulative ~$970M; limited post-round layoffs, selective hiring continues. (AI Business)

**Groq** — AI inference chips; **$640M** led by BlackRock; cumulative >$1B; valuation **$2.8B** (2× Apr 2021 when Tiger/D1 led $300M).

**DevRev** — AI-native platform; **$100.8M Series A**.

**Intelmatix** — MENA enterprise AI (Riyadh/London/Boston); **$20M Series A**; EDIX platform launched Mar 2024 — among region’s largest in class.

**Napkin** — “visual AI” text→diagrams; **$10M**; founders Pramod Sharma & Jerome Scholler (ex-Google; sold Osmo). Web-first; exports common formats.

**Mechanical Orchard** — modernize legacy apps with AI; **$50M Series B** led by GV; cumulative $74M. CEO Rob Mee (ex-Pivotal).

**Opal** (ex-Opal Camera) — consumer AI hardware; **$60M Series B** led by OpenAI Startup Fund; Casey Neistat, Charli & Dixie D’Amelio; Founders Fund, Kindred expected. Altman’s consumer-device interest (Humane; Jony Ive collab) noted.

**Lumi** — AI content co. by Colin Kaepernick; **$4M** early round led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six; comics/graphic novels first.

## Events & people

**Moonshot AI (月之暗面)** — market talk of Tencent in a **$300M** round lifting valuation to **$3.3B**; Star Market Daily sources near the co. confirm Tencent; company/Tencent no comment.

**John Schulman → Anthropic** — OpenAI co-founder / superalignment lead leaves Microsoft-backed OpenAI for Amazon-backed Anthropic to deepen alignment work and return to the technical front line; says departure is not a critique of OpenAI’s alignment commitment. Altman credited Schulman’s early strategic insight. CN note also frames him alongside Ilya Sutskever’s exit path; another OpenAI co-founder/GC coverage continues in same item.

**Ex-Shanda Games VP** — founds AI-games startup (title board; body light).

**LG EXAONE 3.0** — first Korean-language foundation model release.

**Glean** — in talks for **~$250M** new round; ARR ~$55M, path to ~$100M by year-end; prior Feb round >$200M at $2.2B. (WSJ)

**Nvidia Blackwell** — design flaw delays mass shipments of next-gen AI chips into **Q1** (production still ramping H2); MSFT/GOOGL/Meta ordered billions. (after partner-supply messaging from 2024)

**SoundHound** acquires **Amelia AI** for **$80M** — enterprise conversational AI scale-up.

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Editorial English edition published on UniqueCapital: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240812a06bi600
On-site reading page: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240812a06bi600