China’s efforts in generative AI are progressing quickly. Businesses such as Baidu and Alibaba have introduced their own ChatGPT substitutes for OpenAI.
Moonshot AI is another player, with its clever chatbot Kimi Chat based on its own huge language model. The South China Morning Post said that the company had raised more than US$1 billion in finance, led by US venture capital firm Sequoia Capital’s Chinese spin-off, HongShan, and Alibaba.
Moonshot AI is now valued at US$2.5 billion thanks to the new funding, which is reportedly the single largest investment made in a Chinese AI business since ChatGPT launched.
Yang Zhilin, a Tsinghua University alumnus in computer science, launched the business last year. In 2016, he founded a sales technology startup named Recurrent.ai. Yang’s team from that venture joined Moonshot AI.
Last October, Kimi Chat was introduced. Up to 200,000 Chinese characters can be used in chats for the chatbot to comprehend and reply to.