After two years of low-key layout of AI large models, Meituan is no longer a food delivery company
Source: Visual China
Author | Enron
Edit | Yu Chen
Produced by | Deep Web. Tencent Xiaoman Studio
One day in May 2023, Wang Xinyu finally met Yang Zhilin himself in a restaurant next to the office building of the dark side of the moon. Wang Xinyu is a partner at Meituan Longzhu and is mainly responsible for hard technology investments.
A person familiar with the matter revealed to "AI Lightyear" that after nearly 3 hours of communication, Wang Xinyu gave an investment figure, and Yang Zhilin immediately said "yes". Two months later, the market reported that Meituan Dragon Ball led the Pre-A round of financing in the dark side of the month, and the angel round investors Sequoia China and Lisi Capital followed up.
According to "AI Lightyear", as early as January 2023, Dragon Ball began to discuss the plan to "support Yang Zhilin to come out and start a business". Before the official investment, Wang Xinyu had been communicating with Yang Zhilin's team online for nearly half a year. In 2022, Meituan Dragon Ball set up an AI-oriented investment team and paid attention to the progress of GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer).
However, a month later, Meituan Dragon Ball did not wait for the news of Yang Zhilin's entrepreneurship in the field of AGI large models, but an immediate dynamic of Wang Huiwen, the former co-founder of Meituan, detonated the industry.
On February 10, 2023, Wang Huiwen issued an "AI Declaration" at a dinner with Li Zhifei (founder of Mobvoi), Dai Yusen, and Liu Yuan (partner of Zhen Fund): bring $50 million to join the group, set up a light year away, and build OpenAI in China. A month later, light years away, he received a personal investment from Meituan founder Wang Xing.
Subsequently, Wang Huiwen "retired from illness", and Meituan's acquisition of Lightyear became a hot event in the field of large-scale model entrepreneurship last year. Wang Huiwen's withdrawal due to illness was purely accidental, and an employee light years away once told AI Light Year that until a week before Wang Huiwen was hospitalized due to illness, there were no obvious signs at work.
However, what is not known to the outside world is that at the same time that Wang Xing is investing in light years, Meituan has begun a low-key large-scale model layout.
Low-key large-scale model experiments
"I am excited about the tremendous productivity that will be created by the AI model, but also worried about the impact it will have on the whole world in the future. Wang Xing once said in the circle of friends.
According to "AI Lightyear", while Wang Xing invests in Lightyear, Meituan is expanding its algorithm team internally, intensively researching large models and specific applications. "S-team, Meituan's top decision-making body, pays close attention to large models and regularly asks the head of the algorithm team about the progress of large models. ”
However, unlike Baidu, Alibaba, etc., which have launched large-scale model products for the C-end and B-end, Meituan's R&D and investment in large-scale models are relatively secretive. For example, Meituan is included in the second batch of 11 companies that have passed the filing in China, but Meituan has not announced the name, positioning, and application cases of its large models.
For this kind of covert research and development, an insider revealed to "AI Lightyear": "Meituan wants to not only do large models, but also combine them with its own business, and do the vertical field of large models, and there are too many directions, and they are still exploring." ”
For example, in November last year, Meituan launched its first AI interactive product "Wow" based on a number of basic large models that have been filed in China, in an attempt to build a community of AI friends for young people.
In fact, before ChatGPT ignited the "100-model war", Meituan had invested in and implemented AI, for example, the algorithm platform built by Meituan's delivery technology department, Turing (Turing platform), which includes four major functions: machine learning platform, feature platform, Turing online service (Online Serving), and AB experimental platform. Among them, the machine learning platform can provide functions such as model training, task scheduling, model evaluation, and model tuning.
"Meituan itself is involved in related businesses, but it is equivalent to transforming a small model into a large model, and the essence has not changed, and how to commercialize it is the biggest problem. A Meituan insider revealed.
According to AI Lightyear, large models have begun to be used in Meituan's specific business, but they are not yet mature. For example, in the Meituan Daojia business scenario, the large model improves personalized recommendation and intelligent scheduling, and the application of the large model in interactive dialogue scenarios such as intelligent assistants, customer service, and telemarketing. "The number of model parameters used in the business is not very large, but the accuracy of large models is higher than that of small models. One is because of the cost (high-performance GPUs are very expensive), and the other is the relatively long inference time. ”
"AI Catcher"
Meituan's pragmatic technology genes determine that its investment in technology is related to the company's core business, such as Meituan's delivery system, as well as its investment in autonomous delivery vehicles and drones. Wang Xing said in several earnings conferences that automatic delivery is the main support of Meituan's technology strategy. Within Meituan, drones and international business also report directly to Wang Xing.
However, pursuing a pragmatic strategy in technology investment does not mean that Meituan does not pay attention to cutting-edge technologies such as AGI. Wang Xing, who graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering, is extremely sensitive to hard technologies such as chips and large models. According to public information, Wang Xing donated nearly 10% of the shares of Tsinghua University on the occasion of its 110th anniversary to establish the Tsinghua Foundation for scientific research and the cultivation of high-tech talents.
Investment is another way to allocate resources to cutting-edge technologies.
Meituan's investment in technology is mainly realized through Meituan Zhantou and Meituan Dragon Ball. According to the "Deep Web", the investment decisions of the two are decided by the investment committee, and Wang Xing, as a member of the investment committee, will personally see the projects of the investment committee.
Meituan is in charge of CFO Chen Shaohui, and the person in charge of international exploration is Zhu Xiaohu's sister Zhu Wenqian.
According to IT orange data, as of the end of February 2024, Meituan has made a total of 99 investments, with more than 70 investment companies, including 26 investments in the field of artificial intelligence, mainly in the fields of robots, unmanned delivery, autonomous driving, chips and large models.
According to the observation of "AI Lightyear", since Wang Xing announced his personal investment in Lightyear in the first half of last year, Meituan has significantly increased its attention to large models.
In addition to the acquisition of AI Lightyear, Meituan participated in two rounds of investment in Zhipu AI's B+ round and strategic investment from July to October last year. In February, Meituan participated in a Series A funding round led by Alibaba.
The three large model companies invested by Meituan, Lightyear Away, Zhipu AI and Dark Side of the Moon, were named the five most likely to become "China's OpenAI" by Silicon Valley technology media The Information in June last year, the other two being Lanzhou Technology and MiniMax.
However, the first to see the potential of the dark side of the moon in the large model was Meituan Dragon Ball. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, at the beginning of 2023, Meituan Dragon Ball paid attention to Yang Zhilin's team.
Meituan Dragon Ball is the predecessor of Meituan Dianping Industry Fund, which was established in February 2017. Meituan Longzhu's investment committee members include Wang Xing, Chen Shaohui, Zhu Yonghua, Yu Hong, Wang Xinyu, etc. According to IT orange data, by the end of 2023, Meituan Longzhu has participated in a total of 47 investments, of which 4 have invested in artificial intelligence companies, namely the Dark Side of the Moon, Faao FAIR, Aixin Yuanzhi, and Qingzhou Zhihang.
Whether it is Meituan's internal implementation of large models in specific businesses, or its participation in cutting-edge technologies such as semiconductors and large models in the form of investment, Wang Xing's participation in the thinking of great opportunities to change human history. From the beginning of his business, Wang Xing firmly believed that the essence of business is to use technology to solve the problem of efficiency, and Meituan is essentially a technology company.
"The ancestors have a saying that 'a gentleman is not a weapon', and Li Ka-shing also said that 'businessmen have no domain', you don't always set limits for yourself, emphasizing that I am doing a certain thing. If I had to position myself, I would prefer to say that I am a person who wants to use technology to study business. Wang Xing said in an early interview.