---
title: "Weekly AI Worldview | Alibaba Qwen Price Cuts, Lenovo India AI Servers, Amazon GenAI Video Ads"
author: "Unique Research"
sourcePublication: "Unique Research (FFCAP English library)"
originalPublishedAt: "2024-09-23T16:00:00+08:00"
canonical: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240923a05jbu00"
source: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240923a05jbu00"
language: "en"
cnSourceUrl: "https://view.inews.qq.com/a/20240923A05JBU00"
---

# Weekly AI Worldview | Alibaba Qwen Price Cuts, Lenovo India AI Servers, Amazon GenAI Video Ads

_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.

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Editorial English edition published on UniqueCapital: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240923a05jbu00
On-site reading page: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240923a05jbu00