Unique Research · Company / Weekly Digest · September 18, 2024
Funding
VidAU — Pre-A from Nuohui Capital for cross-border e-com AI video models (complex-structure video, digital-human video, multilingual VO). Customers include Kuaishou, Mango TV; claimed average ROI +20% and multi-× production efficiency.
Zhihe Computing (知合计算) — multi-hundred-million-RMB A1 led by Source Code Capital; Linghang Xinjie and Yunjiu followed. RISC-V high-performance / scalable AI processors; funds → R&D, commercialization, talent. Prior angel/Pre-A: Walden, CDH VGC, etc.
Accelerated Evolution (加速进化) — ~RMB 100M Pre-A series (Bian Era, CMBC International, Zhongguancun Science City, iCANX; Inno Angel followed). General biped robot + motion-control SDK; commercial orders; small-batch delivery planned within the year. CEO Cheng Hao: specialty → generality. Tsinghua-background founders + chief scientist in legged/brain-inspired systems.
World Labs (Fei-Fei Li) — exits stealth with $230M (a16z, NEA, Radical Ventures, etc.); valuation >$1B across two rounds in months. First product targeted 2025 — large world models that understand/interact with 3D; artists, designers, developers, engineers; possible game/film customers.
SafetyCulture — A$165M at A$2.5B valuation, led by Airtree (its largest first check). Workflow ops platform (training, asset mgmt, sensors/IoT since Oct 2023) on one of the world’s largest workplace datasets; customers Krispy Kreme, Marriott.
11x.ai — $24M Series A led by Benchmark. London → SF; AI “digital employees” for GTM (Alice sales rep; Jordan phone rep); 25 languages; two more agents coming. Funds → product + hiring.
Supermaven — $12M led by Bessemer; angels include OpenAI co-founder John Schulman and Perplexity co-founder Denis Yarats. Founder Jacob Jackson (ex-Tabnine). Proprietary Babble model with 1M-token context; >35k developers; ~$1M ARR.
Finally (Miami) — $50M Series B + $150M credit line ($305M cumulative debt+equity since 2018). AI bookkeeping/accounting/finance + corporate cards for SMBs; founders Felix & Glennys Rodriguez, Edwin Mejia; revenue +300% since Mar 2022 A ($95M); >1,500 US businesses. PeakSpan: software + embedded credit “one-stop.” Next: sales/marketing + global hiring/payments modules.
Industry moves
Biren Tech — STAR Market IPO tutoring with Guotai Junan. Founded 2019; cloud AI train/infer; partners China Mobile/Telecom; >RMB 5B raised (Qiming, IDG, etc.); first domestic tech for mixed training across three heterogeneous chip types; ~RMB 15.5B valuation.
Kuaishou Kling AI × BlueFocus — strategic pact on AI video for marketing (R&D, platform, scenarios, content). Kling open globally: >1.6M users, 25M images, 16M videos. BlueFocus Blue AI XinYing first to take Kling video API. Also: Kling “director co-creation” AIGC short films.
OpenAI o1 — Sep 13: first reasoning-model family (o1-preview + cheaper o1-mini). RL + chain-of-thought; stronger coding/multi-step math; slower/costlier than GPT-4o; weaker on world facts / files / images. Plus/Team first; Enterprise/Edu the following week. OpenAI frames a new capability class.
Mistral Pixtral 12B — first multimodal (~12B params / ~24GB); Nemo 12B text base; Apache 2.0 on GitHub/HF (torrent); captioning, object counts, arbitrary image count/size via URL or base64. Recent GC-led $645M at $6B valuation.
BlackRock × Microsoft × MGX — FT: >$30B AI infra fund for data centers + energy; Nvidia expertise on AI power demand; BlackRock/GIP (BlackRock bought GIP for $12.5B in Jan) as vehicle.
Typeface — acquires Treat (personalized photo content) and Narrato (AI content ops) after $165M raise / $1B valuation. Founder Abhay Parasnis (ex-Adobe CTO); brand governance + per-customer private models. Terms undisclosed.
Workday × Evisort — acquires AI document platform Evisort (founded 2016; ~$160M raised; Insight, Tola, Bessemer, Tiger, Sanabil). NLP/CV on contracts → searchable structured data; Workday AI/ML + document intelligence. Close targeted FY2025 Q3.
Runway API — Gen-3 Alpha Turbo first; Build / Enterprise plans; ~$0.01/credit (5 credits/sec video); mandatory “Powered by Runway” UI; limited access + disclosure rules.
Oracle × AWS — Oracle Database@AWS (Autonomous DB + Exadata on AWS) with unified OCI/AWS ops, billing, support; low-latency link. Preview later this year; broader 2025.
People
AMD hires ex-NVIDIA VP Pande Oubrerie to lead global AI strategy (was AI software/algorithms at Nvidia).
MiniMax product lead Zhang Qianchuan steps back to product advisor (personal reasons) — formerly Baidu/Zhihu/ByteDance; joined 2023 for C-side roleplay Xingye / Talkie (US). On leave; gap to fill. (Source: Smart Emergence)
Moonshot / Kimi founder Yang Zhilin (Sep 14, Tianjin University Xuanhuai College) — vertical→general intelligence; general models need internet data + chip/network progress + Transformers; AGI challenges: scaling laws, multimodal, data wall; o1 as shift from natural data → RL-generated data; text-model IQ as generation ceiling; model-as-product / AI assistant as possible super-app; tech×product coupling. (Source: Tencent Tech)
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