Unique Research · Company / Weekly Digest · October 21, 2024
China funding
Star Era (星动纪元): nearly ¥300M Pre-A led by Clearwater Capital, Yuanjing Capital, Alibaba (Ceyuan following). Founded by Tsinghua AP Chen Jianyu — native general embodied agents: robot foundation models + AI-defined hardware. Commercialized STAR 1 humanoid (6th gen) and XHAND 1 dexterous hand. Proceeds: R&D + humanoid commercialization.
Wangsi Tech (网思科技): ¥100M+ cumulative after Paradigm Fund exclusive A+ — AI LLM app services / MaaS for industry models; digital twin for smart manufacturing.
Overseas funding
Dottxt: $11.9M — structured generation for LLMs (Outlines team); guide model outputs not prompts; Bayesian-stat background; grow team & adoption before full commercialization.
Lightmatter: $400M Series D at $4.4B valuation led by T. Rowe Price (Fidelity, GV) — photonic interconnect so hundreds of GPUs sync (up to 30 Tbps; 1,024 GPUs in custom racks). Interest from Microsoft, Amazon, xAI, OpenAI; next: optical substrates for denser networking.
Industry moves
Shanghai AI Ecosystem Fund lands in Xuhui — ¥10B total, first tranche ¥3B. Lead: Shanghai State Investment with Xuhui Capital, Lingang Holdings, Caohejing, miHoYo, SenseTime, Bilibili. Manager: Shanghai Guotou Futeng. Focus: AI infra, foundation & vertical models, next-gen edge apps. Already strategic with MiniMax, StepFun; LOIs with Wuxi Core, CAS Jiahe, BaseFlow, Mita, Kupasi, Lingchuan Yuheng, Yike Energy, Xingyun Aidian (some first rounds).
Boston Dynamics × Toyota Research Institute: TRI large behavior models (LBMs) on electric Atlas — overnight training can reach ~90% accuracy on home tasks (e.g. frying pancakes). CEO Robert Playter: accelerate useful general humanoids.
Perplexity: WSJ reports ~$500M raise at ~$8B valuation (vs SoftBank-era $3B last summer); ~15M queries/day; ~$50M ARR. Publisher scraping disputes ongoing; CEO Aravind Srinivas open to publisher deals.
Mira Murati (ex-OpenAI CTO) raising for a new AI startup.
People
Jiang Tianyu (ex-Xiaoice CIO) → PixelBloom CFO. Dane Stuckey (ex-Palantir CISO) → OpenAI security leadership.
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