The dark side of the moon is riddled with rumors, and the risk of large-scale model unicorns is geometric?

Reporter: Yang Xinyi Editor: Liu Xuemei

In the hottest field of large models, it is not easy for a star unicorn company to keep a low profile.

Recently, there have been many rumors in the market about the dark side of the moon. Jiemian News said that after the completion of the last round of financing, Yang Zhilin, the founder of the dark side of the moon, has cashed out tens of millions of dollars by selling his personal shares, and the founder and related personnel have cashed out $40 million. In addition, there are market rumors that Zhang Yutong, the former managing partner of GSR Ventures, who participated in the investment in Yang Zhilin's first entrepreneurial project "Circular Intelligence", has left GSR Ventures and will join the dark side of the moon.

For the above two rumors, on April 23, the dark side of the moon responded to the reporter of the "Daily Economic News" one by one, saying that the news of the founder's cash-out was untrue, and the dark side of the moon had previously announced the employee incentive plan;

The dark side of the month that obtained the largest single financing in the domestic AI field, the launch of the Kimi intelligent assistant only took 5 months to increase the non-destructive context length limit that the product can support from 200,000 words to 2 million words, driving the "Kimi concept stock" to achieve a wave of skyrocketing, Kimi intelligent assistant in March this year The number of visits increased by 321.58% month-on-month, and even went down for a time. As a representative of the mainland large-scale model star company, the dark side of the moon has inherited a dazzling aura in a short period of time, and has been warmly welcomed by a number of capitals, Internet manufacturers and users.

But the shock caused by the market rumors in the past two days has also been huge. Should the management think calmly about what kind of risks may exist in these star unicorns?

The rumors of the founder's cash-out are untrue

"It's not often that a company can cash out so much in its first year. In Jiemian News' report on Yang Zhilin's cash-out, some investors in the industry said.

The dark side of the moon is already an existence that cannot be ignored in the field of large models in China, and this startup was founded on March 1, 2023, and it has only been 1 year now. According to the data, in June 2023, the dark side of the moon completed an angel round of financing of more than 200 million US dollars, with investment institutions including Zhen Fund and Sequoia China, with a post-investment valuation of about 300 million US dollars.

The fact that the Dark Side of the Moon was able to successfully raise funds of this scale within 3 months of its establishment is not unrelated to the background of its founder. The dark side of the moon once told the reporter of "Daily Economic News" that the founder Yang Zhilin is the first author of two important papers, TransformerXL and XLNet, both of which involve the core technology in the field of large language models. At the same time, he is also the most cited researcher in the field of NLP (natural language processing) under the age of 35 in China.

As early as 2016, Yang Zhilin started his first business, founded the AI enterprise service company Circular Intelligence, and in December 2021, he received a $38 million financing co-led by Boyu Investment and Sequoia China, followed by old shareholders GSR Ventures, Jingya Capital, Zhen Fund, Wanwu Capital, etc.

In addition, the two co-founders of the dark side of the moon, Zhou Xinyu and Wu Yuxin, are both from Tsinghua University and have work experience in well-known technology companies such as Meta and Megvii Technology.

The founder team, rich entrepreneurial experience and up-and-coming Kimi intelligent assistant enabled the dark side of the moon to complete a new round of financing of more than $1 billion at the end of February this year, with investors including Sequoia China, Xiaohongshu, Alibaba and old shareholders following the investment. After this round of financing, the valuation of the dark side of the moon reached $2.5 billion.

According to the data, Yang Zhilin, Zhou Xinyu, Wu Yuxin, including the five founding members of the company, are shareholders of the dark side of the moon, of which Yang Zhilin holds 78.968% of the shares, which is the largest shareholder, and Zhou Xinyu, who holds 10% of the shares, is the second largest shareholder. According to media reports, in order to ensure that the founder team retains absolute decision-making power and control, the dark side of the moon has made AB shares.

With the company's valuation rising, it has been rumored recently that Yang Zhilin, who is the largest shareholder of the dark side of the moon, has cashed out tens of millions of dollars by selling his personal shares. The dark side of the moon responded to the reporter of the "Daily Economic News" that the above news is untrue, and the dark side of the moon has previously announced the employee incentive plan, which can be seen in the official information.

The Matthew effect of the market is emerging

There is no doubt that even if the dark side of the moon denies the rumors of cashing out, the market and the industry will most likely still have some fluctuations in confidence in the dark side of the moon.

Looking at the current domestic large-scale model start-ups, the Matthew effect has emerged - capital and market resources are mainly concentrated in the hands of a few leading enterprises.

For example, in addition to the dark side of the moon, Zhipu AI completed a new round of financing in March this year, and the company has received a total of more than 2.5 billion yuan in financing in 2023, with investors including social security funds, Alibaba, Ant, Meituan, Tencent, Hillhouse and other well-known institutions, and the company's valuation exceeds 10 billion yuan;

In this regard, Wang Sheng, partner of Innova Angel Fund, said in an interview with the reporter of "Daily Economic News" that everyone believes that the large model will be the foundation of AI in the future and will have a strong scale effect, so everyone wants to invest in this direction. But this field needs too much money, and it is impossible to disperse it, so it can only be concentrated in the head.

The concentrated betting of capital will inevitably lead to extreme attention from the outside world to a small number of leading companies, and every move of these star unicorn companies will eventually cause a certain market reaction after market fermentation.

Recently, there is also a rumor that has also aroused the market's attention to the dark side of the moon, that is, former GSR Venture Capital managing partner Zhang Yutong is rumored to be joining the dark side of the moon.

The reporter checked the official website of GSR Venture Capital and found that there is no information about Zhang Yutong on the team introduction page. But at the same time, the darkness of the moon told the reporter of "Daily Economic News" that Zhang Yutong has not joined the dark side of the moon at present.

What uncertainties may exist in the return on investment of star unicorns represented by the dark side of the moon?

Shen Yang, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University, mentioned in an interview with the "Daily Economic News" reporter that for C-end large-scale model startups, the cost of traffic acquisition is very high, and it is difficult to match the scale of users of Internet giants applying large-scale models on their existing platforms.

In addition, Wang Sheng pointed out to the reporter of "Daily Economic News" that new application scenarios have not yet been explored, especially for AI startups. Nowadays, many applications are to apply AI to existing Internet business projects in the past, and the big players in the old industry in the past have a series of advantages such as customers, money, data, talents, and understanding of scenarios, which are difficult for startups to make up. For startups, the core is to innovate, not only to serve existing scenarios and existing users, but also to find new needs and people.

National Business Daily