Unique Research · Insight / Capital Monthly · August 28, 2024 · Data window: July 2024 (YTD through July)
Ingest note: ~23 CN charts. EN keeps headline ¥/$ and board inventory from body — attach or redraw tables on import; do not invent ranks absent from CN. Secondary-market stock blurbs abbreviated.
July 2024 snapshot
- Global AIGC financing: ¥29.0B in July — +66.67% vs June.
- Largest global raise: Cohere $500M (~¥3.567B). Canada NLP/semantic startup (2019; Aidan Gomez & Nick Frosst, ex-Google Brain; Gomez co-author of “Attention Is All You Need”). Command-R: 10 languages incl. EN/ZH/FR/DE; ChatGPT-like product matrix.
- China: Baichuan Intelligent A2 — ¥2.824B from 17+ investors (Shunxi, Lingang Sci-Tech, Shenzhen Capital, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Asia Investment, CICC Capital, TAL, Zhuoyuan Asia, Shunwei, Redpoint China, Muhua, 37 Interactive, Zhongbei Comm, Sunyard, etc.). 36Kr: post-A, Baichuan to open B at ¥20B pre.
1.1 Overseas July
Angels important: 7 early projects (Harvey, Presti, Arcee.ai, Nagish, Enso, Phyron, OpenFi) — ~¥1.15B estimated from individuals (seed–C). 9 overseas institutions put >¥500M into AIGC; AMD closed ~¥4.744B via all-cash $665M buy of Finland’s Silo AI (software depth vs Nvidia). Six $100M+ overseas names: Silo.AI, Influential, Cohere, Skild AI, Harvey, World Labs.
Skild AI (Pittsburgh embodied; founded May 2023 by ex-CMU profs Abhinav Gupta & Deepak Pathak) — ~¥2.2B ($300M) Series A at >¥10B / $1.5B post after one year. Lightspeed, SoftBank, Coatue, Bezos, CRV, Felicis, Menlo, Sequoia, General Catalyst, SV Angel, CMU. “Skild Brain” foundation model for robots → physical-world AGI path. Team from Meta/Tesla/Nvidia + CMU/Stanford.
1.2 China July
67 institutions; MiraclePlus 3 deals; BAIC Industrial Investment & Dinghui 2 each. 38 AIGC firms funded; 8 over ¥100M incl. Baichuan, Shengtong, Sand AI, Bangke, Xellar Biosystems, liblibAI, Yirijian, SiliconFlow. 19 at ¥10M+. Charts for full boards attach on ingest.
1.3 YTD through July
- Global: ¥167.4B; 484 events — amount +45% vs 2023 ¥115.4B; count +310.2% vs 118.
- China: ~¥26.886B; 221 events — amount +186%, count +167% YoY.
- China share: 16.1% of global amount; 43.6% of deal count.
- Global top raise YTD: xAI $6B B (May 26) — $18B pre / $24B post; a16z, Sequoia, etc. Mission: “understand the true nature of the universe.”
- China top: Moonshot >$1B (Feb; Alibaba, Sequoia China, Xiaohongshu, Meituan, Lisi…) — val ~$2.5B.
02 Global trends & country mix
Q2 disclosed deals ~220 (~3.3× YoY). July deal count +~24% MoM. Amount spikes from mega LLM rounds: xAI $6B; Anthropic $2.75B Amazon (Mar); Moonshot $1B (Feb); Baichuan ¥2.824B (Jul). 2024 monthly mean amount ~¥23.914B. Avg deal size by month (¥100M): 1.3 / 5.5 / 7.2 / 0.7 / 7.1 / 1.8 / 2.4. US ¥99.535B amount #1 / 150 deals (~71% of China’s count); China ¥26.886B #2 amount / 211 deals #1 count. Canada #3 after Cohere $500M. France #4 after Mistral + H (Holistic) ~¥5.83B in May.
03 China investors & hot projects (Jan–Jul)
Most active: MiraclePlus 17 (Shuzong, EdgeAI, GigaAI, animate.ai, ProDuck Lab, SiliconFlow, RWKV, Ximo, Llama-alpaca, Yuhe, NoEdgeAI, Jike Xingren, Puppy Agent, NieTa, SmartPrep.AI, Guanglun, Kuafu). Alibaba 5 (Baichuan, Moonshot, MiniMax, Wow Universe, Jingzhunxue) — Unique Research estimates Alibaba book may exceed ¥9B by end-Jul. Shunxi & Zhipu 4 each; 12 institutions at 3 (Shengjing, Lingang, Baidu Ventures, Hubble, Amoeba, Yaotu, Baidu, GSR, Dinghui, iFLYTEK, Miracle Gate, CICC Capital). 195 China AIGC firms raised; 41 over ¥100M. Top amounts: Moonshot $1B; MiniMax $600M; Zhipu $400M (Prosperity7, June). Monthly mean deals 30; Jul ~30% above average. Feb amount peak ¥8.249B (Moonshot).
04 Overseas investors & hot projects
a16z 8 deals (most active overseas by count). 76 overseas institutions put >¥1B YTD (vs 49 in 2023). Overseas AIGC raised ~¥140.5B (+32.5% vs ¥106.0B). Top: xAI ¥42.65B; Anthropic ¥21.51B; Mistral ¥7.27B; also Cohere, Lambda, Skild, Tenstorrent, DeepL, Genmo over ¥1B. May amount spike ~¥55.1B (xAI, Mistral, DeepL, Holistic cluster).
05 A-share AIGC concept (as of Jul 31)
East Money AIGC concept index 1,137.8 (−0.99% MoM); turnover ¥462.2B; turnover rate 45.09%. Top gainers (CN names): Feilixin, Huaxin Yongdao, 5i5j, Zhongcheng Tech, Autel Electronics — company blurbs image-heavy; attach selectively on ingest.
06 Notes
Unique Research team intro + disclaimer: market reference only; methods/data limits; no legal liability for figures/views. Cite: Data source: Unique Research (非凡产研).
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