Faced with the fire of Chat GPT, Lee Kai-fu finally couldn't bear it.
Last night, Kai-Fu Lee released a circle of friends, officially announcing that he was personally preparing for Project AI 2.0, a new global AI company, targeting the field of large models.
Source: Web
Kai-Fu Lee introduced that Project AI 2.0 is not only the AIGC generation of graphic creation, Co-pilot and the applications seen today are only the beginning of AI 2.0 capabilities.
In his opinion, the upgrade of productivity tools is a huge opportunity. He also revealed his official website, and has now opened a channel to search for talents around the world.
To create a Chinese version of ChatGPT, Kai-Fu Lee is not the first big man to enter the venture capital circle.
Last month, Wang Huiwen, the former co-founder of Meituan, also opened the road to reemployment, announced "building China's OpenAI", and also released a bold statement: 50 million US dollars, bring capital into the group, do not care about the position, salary and title, and ask for a team.
Not long ago, Baidu also released a message from Wen Xin, China's "Chat GPT market" is becoming more and more lively.
01 Hero posts for the world
Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and CEO of Innovation Works, posted in the circle of friends that he "is personally preparing for Project Al 2.0". It's more like a job posting, laying a talent base for Innovation Factory's seventh company.
Since the popularity of ChatGPT, Kai-Fu Lee has also said many times on social platforms that in the era of ChatGPT, how should we correctly deal with the unemployment problem caused by AI.
In order to meet the challenges brought by ChatGPT, Project AI 2.0 is not only a high-energy chat tool, nor is it just AIGC generation for graphic creation, Co-pilot and the applications seen today are just appetizers for AI 2.0 capabilities.
In his "job post", we can see three important information.
The first is led by Lee Kai-fu himself.
As the seventh company incubated by the top of the Innovation Factory, Kai-Fu Lee said that Project AI 2.0 is a global company committed to building a new platform for AI 2.0 and AI-first productivity applications, and is an innovative enterprise driven by technological vision and with excellent Chinese engineering heritage.
The second is what Project AI 2.0 is going to do.
Project AI 2.0 is not only the Chinese version of ChatGPT so simple, Kai-Fu Lee believes that AI 2.0 is not only a high-energy chat tool, nor is it just an AIGC generation for graphic creation, these applications that can be seen today are only the beginning of AI 2.0, and there will be more complex functions waiting to be unlocked in the future.
The third is to recruit talent.
At present, the funds and computing power of Project AI 2.0 have been put in place, and the new company options are absolutely dominated by the new team, so it is necessary to recruit top talents in the direction of large model, multi-modality, NLP, AI algorithm engineering and research, distributed computing/infrastructure and so on.
According to the latest information of Innovation Factory, "a number of technical management talents with large teams led by global large factories have confirmed their intention to join".
In the early stage of the company's development, the company was fully led by Lee Kai-fu, and after the CEO was in place, after the handover, Innovation Factory also said that the new company's ten-year technical blueprint has been completed, the route plan has been clear, and after the Chinese market is stable, it is possible to open up the global market.
On March 14, shortly after Innovation Factory held its first AI Trend Conference in Beijing, Kai-Fu Lee stressed that AI 2.0 is a revolution that must not be missed.
For the development paradigm of AI 2.0, it can be divided into three stages, the first is human-machine collaboration, in this stage, humans and AI are cooperative relations, at this time AI is immature, it is inevitable to output some wrong information, that is, it is still in the stage of not fully trusting.
Then it can be partially automated, and in some industries and fields with strong template, you can try to fully automate, allowing you to let go in industries with low fault tolerance.
The last stage is the whole process automation, at which time AI can be used in the whole industry, and even in industries with high fault tolerance such as teachers and doctors, AI can appear.
The three major directions that the Innovation Factory should focus on now include AI 2.0 intelligent applications, AI 2.0 platforms and AI 2.0 infrastructure.
02 Kai-Fu Lee and Innovation Factory
Judging from Lee's resume, he has been working for computer software.
Born in Taiwan, Kai-Fu Lee studied computer science at Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, where he later served as an associate professor.
After graduating, Kai-Fu Lee joined Apple, where he was in charge of the multimedia part of the company for 6 years, during which time, in his early thirties, Lee took the position of Apple's global vice president.
In the prime of his career, Kai-Fu Lee turned around and joined Microsoft Group in Silicon Valley, led the team to do research and development work, and two years later, successfully served as the global vice president of Microsoft Group.
After resigning from Microsoft, Kai-Fu Lee joined Google, as Google's research and development leader in China, Kai-Fu Lee frequently paid attention to the domestic market, and finally in 2009, Kai-Fu Lee left Google, left the United States, and came to the Chinese market.
In the same year, the venture established Innovation Factory, which is a new business model, is a mix of angel investment + business incubator + entrepreneurial guidance, to help Chinese youth succeed in entrepreneurship, help China build a new generation of high-tech companies, currently manages a total of five US dollar funds and five RMB funds, with a total scale of about 20 billion yuan.
Compared with foreign countries, China's angel investment at that time was still in its infancy, and Kai-Fu Lee raised $15 million for Innovation Factory through his personal brand, including Hon Hai Chairman Terry Gou, Lenovo Group Chairman Liu Chuanzhi, Yu Minhong led New Oriental Education Technology Group and many other big names.
In the following continuous development, Innovation Factory is also changing its positioning, shifting its layout focus to VC venture capital rounds, and repositioning itself as TECH VC - VC invested in the technology field, and the focus investment stage is shifted to the A-B round.
Under the leadership of Kai-Fu Lee, Innovation Factory invested in more than 20 unicorns valued at more than US$1 billion. Megvii, Zhihu, Shuidrop, Meitu, Innovation Qizhi, Momenta, WeRide Zhixing, etc., have gained a lot from the innovation factory by intervening in these projects at an early stage.
In 2012, Innovation Factory invested in MineVision Technology, which was its first attempt in the field of AI, and began to explore the AI track, and in 2016, founded the Artificial Intelligence Engineering Institute. Driven by Kai-Fu Lee, the keyword of Innovation Factory became AI.
Up to now, the Innovation Factory has cultivated 10 AI 1.0 unicorn companies, while the companies incubated by the top of the artificial intelligence engineering institute include 6 enterprises such as Innovation Qizhi, Lanzhou Technology, and Chengyuan Technology.
Kai-Fu Lee predicts that in the next two decades, there will be huge opportunities in four areas: AI automation, advanced computing architecture, new energy technology and life science technology.
With the start of building the Chinese version of Chat GPT this time, Kai-Fu Lee's layout has once again ushered in expansion.
In the past year, the meta-universe and Web3 have come and gone, but in the end they have not been able to stir up too many waves. ChatGPT is different, and before that, no other technology could take the world by storm at such a fast speed.
In just a few months, including Zhou Hongyi, Wang Huiwen, Ding Lei, Li Yanhong and Lin Fan, almost half of the Chinese Internet bigwigs are trying to open up the "Chinese version of ChatGPT" market.
As Bill Gates commented, ChatGPT is no less significant than the birth of the PC or the Internet.
This article originated from Superelectric Labs