Unique Research · Insight / Weekly Digest · September 23, 2024
China funding
Jifeng Tech (极峰科技) — multi-million-RMB angel (Qingxin Capital). Industrial AI LLMs for process industries (energy / equipment / process) toward efficiency and emissions cuts without rip-and-replace hardware. Multi-modal fusion, time-series forecast, and optimization-decision models; agent platform due to customer plants by end-2024. Founded Jul 2023.
Molecule Heart (分子之心) — multi-hundred-million-RMB Series A co-led by Sino Investment & Shenzhen Capital; SenseTime Guoxiang & Jiuyi followed. Prior backers: Cathay Biotech, Sequoia China, Baidu Ventures, Lenovo Capital. Founder computational biologist Xu Jinbo. Platforms: MoleculeOS + NewOrigin protein generative model for discovery / redesign / design of functional proteins.
Tongren Tech (瞳仁科技) — multi-million-RMB angel (Suzhou Jiahong Medical Fund). AI myopia prevention for ages 6–18 — OuOu AI cloud optometry system (auto testing devices, cloud AI diagnose/predict, training instruments). Partnerships with 1,000+ schools; B2C rental trials. Founded 2022.
Overseas funding
Fathom — $17M Series A led by Telescope Partners (incl. $2M from users via Wefunder). Seed $4.7M early 2022. Revenue ×90 and usage ×20 over two years. Own/finetuned open models for meeting notes + post-meeting busywork (CRM, agents). CEO/co-founder Richard White: unused meeting data as context intelligence for leadership.
Fal.ai — $23M total: $14M A led by Kindred Ventures + prior undisclosed $9M seed led by a16z; also Robin Rombach (Black Forest Labs), Aravind Srinivas (Perplexity). Founded 2021 by Burkay Gur & Gorkem Yurtseven — managed compute/workflows + open-model APIs for audio/video/image gen. Customers: Perplexity, Photoroom, Freepik, PlayHT, retail/e-com. Funds → inference optimization + research team.
Industry moves
Alibaba Cloud Apsara Conference 2024 (Hangzhou, Sep 19–21) — “Cloud Sparks Intelligence, Industry Transforms”; 3 main forums, 400+ sessions, 40,000 m² AI exhibit. CTO Zhou Jingren launched open-source Qwen2.5; flagship Qwen2.5-72B claimed ahead of Llama 405B on open boards; 100+ models across sizes/modalities/math/code. Qwen-Max upgraded near GPT-4o — default on Tongyi web/app, still free; API via Bailian. Bailian price cuts: Qwen-Turbo −85% to ¥0.3 / million tokens; Plus −80%; Max −50%. New users: 50M free tokens + 4,500 image gens.
Lenovo — AI servers in southern India plant + Bangalore R&D lab focused on AI servers. Plan: 50k AI rack servers + 2,400 GPU servers/year for local + export (Reuters). Nasscom-BCG: AI hardware ~12% of global AI market by 2027, ~$380B.
Amazon — GenAI video tools for sellers: “Live Images” (animated GIFs) and deeper “Video Generator” from a single product image, tuned to USP/features — ads without production crews.
Google — CEO Sundar Pichai at UN Future Summit: $120M global AI education fund. AI as “most transformative tech yet”; four SDG opportunities (info in one’s language, science discovery, climate hazard warning/tracking, growth); warn against AI divide and protectionism; “smart product regulation.”
People
Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu (吴泳铭) at Apsara: past 22 months fastest AI progress ever, still early AGI; max imagination is AI taking over the digital world and changing the physical world — not just phone apps; compute shifting CPU→GPU AI stacks; Alibaba Cloud investing infra (single network cluster to ~100k-card scale); people overestimate short-term / underestimate long-term tech revolutions.
— END —