Hengyu originated from the Cave Fei Temple
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In the fourth month of Meituan's new business, Meituan's investment valuation became a unicorn at the speed of light.
Qubit learned from capital market channels that Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen's AI startup Lightyears away has recently completed a new round of $230 million (equivalent to RMB 1.63 billion, the specific amount is subject to the official) financing, with a pre-investment valuation of US$1 billion, entering the market for 100 days, and being promoted to a unicorn.
Lightyears away, the round of financing is said to be led by Source Code Capital, betting $80 million, with the participation of Tencent, Wuyuan Capital and Kuaishou founder Su Hua.
Wuyuan invested $40 million, and Suhua invested $40 million in his personal capacity — Suhua has appeared in a number of generative AI projects since March this year.
But the most interesting thing is still Tencent, after MiniMax and Shenyan Technology, Goose Factory once again made a big bet of $50 million, which is currently the most active industrial investor in the field of large models.
And with the completion of this round of financing, Wang Huiwen also fulfilled the "preview" - in March this year, the circle of friends officially announced that it brought 50 million US dollars into the game so far, light years away from rushing to the outlet, organizing, opening, mergers and acquisitions to financing in one go, although there is no new product progress, but it is undoubtedly the most appealing star startup company in the capital market.
100 days of entrepreneurship, less than 4 months, unicorn valuation!
Light-years away
Lightyears away, the company entering the field of artificial intelligence intends to "team up to embrace the new era and build China's OpenAI."
Before the financing news was exposed, the latest news about the company appeared on May 5, when Wang Huiwen forwarded the company's recruitment post on the Instant App, looking for crawlers, data, front-end, back-end and product interns.
Lao Wang, who is "learning artificial intelligence", is thirsty for talents, "seeking resumes, asking for recommendations, and asking for forwards".
The story beyond light-years begins at the beginning of this year, when ChatGPT was on its edge.
In February, Wang Huiwen, Qianqian founder Li Zhifei, and two partners of ZhenFund, Dai Yusen and Liu Yuan, came to have an appointment. The four of them saw the changes brought by ChatGPT with their own eyes, and talked and laughed about this wave of AI fever.
Wang Huiwen's attitude is "must participate". Chatting about the rise, he picked up his mobile phone and announced his posture of bowing into the game in a high-profile manner:
Entered the ChatGPT craze with $50 million and wanted to join the right company.
When more details of the venture were disclosed 2 days later, Wang Huiwen's idea had obviously changed from "asking for a team" to "I will form a team".
While announcing the recruitment of "top technical talents", the light pole commander said that you can rest assured to display your talents, leave the chores to him, and there is no need to worry about funds——
In addition to his personal contribution of $50 million at a valuation of $200 million, "VCs have subscribed $230 million in the next round of financing"!
In March, the second big man who bet on light-years away appeared, he is Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan.
The Meituan boss joined the team by "contributing", participating in Series A investments, and serving as a director outside of Lightyear. Wang Xing and Wang Huiwen are classmates and roommates of Tsinghua University, and have cooperated in entrepreneurship several times, and together they have created many familiar brands such as intranet and Meituan.
Fighting side by side again, Wang Xing briefly explained the reason behind it in the ticket circle:
The big AI model makes me both excited about the huge productivity to be created, and worried about its future impact on the world.
Lao Wang He has been walking together on the road of entrepreneurship for nearly two decades, and since he is determined to embrace this big wave, then I must support it.
Also running away in March is Ma Zhankai, the father of Sogou's input method, who has been a product consultant for Meituan since 2010.
"AGI based on big models has started the fourth technological revolution, which will be a big wave of multiple layers and waves that will eventually change everything." Ma Zhankai wrote on Weibo, "I have to be involved. ”
He said that the light-year "benchmarking OpenAl" co-creation team allowed him to see "a vibrant scene like when Meituan was founded", so he felt confident and hoped that "he can also make a small contribution".
By mid-to-late March, 36Kr reported that Lightyear away from the AI architecture startup First-class Technology (Oneflow) was about to reach a merger intention.
Founded in January 2017, First-class Technology is oriented to the development and promotion of a general deep learning standard framework.
Its founder and CEO, Yuan Jinhui, graduated from the Department of Computer Science of Tsinghua University with a Ph.D. under the tutelage of Academician Zhang Cymbal, and worked as a principal researcher at MSRA (Microsoft Research Asia).
It is rumored that the merger will eventually fall within 1 billion yuan.
On April 17, Qicha public information showed that the largest shareholder of first-class technology had been changed to Lightyear, and the legal person was also changed to Wang Huiwen - of course, this is an afterword.
In late March, at the same time as first-class technology, there were two other AI startups, both from Tsinghua, and even from THUNLP (Tsinghua Natural Language Processing Lab) Sun Maosong and Liu Zhiyuan.
One is Facewall Intelligence, with Tsinghua AI professor Liu Zhiyuan as the co-founder, and now co-creating multiple large models with Zhihu. Zeng Guoyang, the founder and CTO of the company, participated in the research and development of KLCII's "Wudao Wenyuan" large model.
One is DeepLang AI, which is mainly oriented to AI and NLP, and has just been bet by Tencent to complete a pre-A+ round of financing of nearly 1 billion yuan. Founder and CEO Fanchao Yi is a 2017 doctoral student in the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University.
However, the acquisition of these two companies outside of light-years has been rumored, but there has been no follow-up. Only the capital level confirmed the real existence of Lao Wang's contact with them, but in the end had to accept the end of the valuation negotiation.
Of course, the rumored M&A plan either shelved or not going away did not hinder the pace beyond light-years.
At the end of March, Wang Huiwen posted on social media that the new company had confirmed three co-creations, "one is a co-creation with an Infra background, a co-creation with an algorithm background, and me." ”
When it comes to "process reasons", who the other two are with specific surnames and who are sacred, Wang Huiwen chose not to disclose to the public for the time being, and has kept it confidential so far.
After recruiting talents and recruiting in March, the time soon came to the second month after Lao Wang officially announced his entry into the game.
On April 6, it officially opened light years away, and Wang Huiwen updated his news in the circle of friends.
On this day, Lao Wang ate cake, received many flower baskets, and officially exposed the location of the new office:
Secretly fight Tsinghua Science and Technology Park
Sohu Network Building, located in the southeast corner of Tsinghua Science and Technology Park in Haidian, Beijing, was originally the location of Sogou's headquarters. The corner of the 15th floor of the building was once used as an office by Sogou founder Wang Xiaochuan.
In April, which was also light-years away, Wang Xiaochuan, who had been away from Sogou for 542 days, held a small exchange meeting on the 2nd floor of the building.
At the meeting, he announced his new company, Baichuan Intelligence, and announced that he would start running in the big model entrepreneurship track.
At the meeting, it was also confirmed through Wang Xiaochuan's mouth that Wang Huiwen was entrenched on the 3rd floor of this building with light years away.
The interesting thing is that the 7th to 11th floors further up are the territory of Tsinghua's AI startup Zhipu AI.
Wang Xiaochuan, Wang Huiwen, Zhang Peng & Tang Jie, the building of Sohu Network Building seems to have been wrapped up by the big model entrepreneurs of the Tsinghua department - although Wang Xiaochuan finally chose another place to live, taking the next door Xaar Building as the "birthplace" of "Baichuan".
Sohu Building stands side by side with Xaar Building, and a street further south hides two other high-profile Tsinghua-affiliated AI startups:
The first is the Shenyan technology already mentioned;
The second is Huang Minlie, associate professor of the Department of Computer Science of Tsinghua University, founded Lingxin Intelligence. In December last year, Lingxin Intelligent has launched its first product "AI Utopia", behind which is the super-anthropomorphic large model developed by Lingxin Intelligence.
In this round of domestic large-scale model entrepreneurship, from all levels, Tsinghua AI startups are the most eye-catching existence of "needless to say".
Because it was outside the southeast gate of Tsinghua University, it has now become the focus of the dark war. Now, within 100 meters, at least 5 Tsinghua large model teams have gathered here.
The large and small cafes in the Tsinghua Science and Technology Park are also becoming a wrestling point for capital VC competition.
Tencent, the most successful industrial VC in the mobile Internet era, has made heavy bets here, spending money like flowing water and investing like salt.
Other old money and new money VCs are also moving non-stop, hoping to get a piece of the pie at the stage where the valuation is acceptable.
However, these capital VCs crowded in the Tsinghua Science and Technology Park seem to have disappeared from Ali. Ali has set its sights further afield to the core streets and parks of Zhongguancun, where it is said to have quietly participated in new financing for MiniMax and another company at the north gate.
Reference Links:
[1]https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/aFL0fLIgi78yzjqYuGzwDA
[2]https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/OAcj9oJ6_TRqTh42Imlu5w
[3]https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Gc-u0HJMUsdzmWOnvigE3Q
[4]https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ejo0mS_m-YoYcb5qQHBa6Q
[5]https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/gPeXD7_9Cxd5NMjUjH4Clg
[6]https://www.qcc.com/chistory/a182426d76c5da1ba9dec43227d48797.html
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