Author | Cheng Qian
Edit | Heart
Zhidong reported on May 20 that recently, Tsinghua University's large-scale model startup company Yuanyuan Technology was rumored to have undergone high-level personnel changes, and the founder Zhou Bowen no longer presided over the company's affairs. It is reported that Zhou Bowen will join the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or serve as the director.
Zhou Bowen was born in Fengcheng, Jiangxi Province in October 1976, has been engaged in AI research for more than 20 years, published more than 100 papers, is the Huiyan Chair Professor of Tsinghua University, a tenured professor of the Department of Electronics, and the founder of Zhiyuan Technology. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Information Science from the University of Science and Technology of China, his M.S. in Information and Signal Processing from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Colorado in 2003.
Prior to founding Zhiyuan Technology, Bowen Zhou served as the Dean of IBM Research's Artificial Intelligence Foundation Research Institute at the US Headquarters, the Chief Scientist of IBM Watson Group, the Senior Vice President of JD Group, the Chairman of the Technical Committee of JD Group, and the President of JD Cloud and AI Business Line. During his tenure at JD.com, he brought more than a dozen AI scientists to JD.com, including Mei Tao, who worked at Microsoft Research Asia.
▲Zhou Bowen, tenured professor of the Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University, Huiyan Chair Professor of Tsinghua University, and founder of Zhiyuan Technology (Source: Qiming Venture Capital)
In October 2021, Zhou Bowen founded the AI large model start-up company Yuanyuan Technology, focusing on making the large model better at understanding people and goods, and using generative AI through ProductGPT to help enterprises and consumers achieve innovation from product insight, positioning, involvement, R&D to marketing. According to the official introduction, its products have been applied to food and beverage, 3C, home appliances and other industry scenarios, serving JD.com, Mengniu and other head customers.
▲ Lianyuan Technology Product Matrix (Source: Zhiyuan Technology)
At the beginning of last year, when ChatGPT had just detonated the generative AI boom, Zhou Bowen posted a circle of friends to recruit talents, announcing that the goal of Zhiyuan Technology is to "help enterprises and consumers subversively complete the correct cognition of product innovation and digital intelligence in the era of artificial intelligence through generative AI and multi-round dialogue human-machine collaboration", and emphasized that "China's OpenAI needs to explore a new path: vertical integration from its own basic model to a closed-loop loop of applications and users in all scenarios, Realize the 'dual landing' of generative AI technology and business value".
In March 2023, Lingyuan Technology completed an angel round of financing of hundreds of millions of yuan, led by Qiming Venture Capital and followed by Jingwei Venture Capital. In January this year, the self-developed product merchant model and multi-modal large model "G Xiaoxian" successfully passed the filing and was rumored to be preparing for the Pre-A round of financing.
Zhou Bowen's last public appearance as the founder of Zhiyuan Technology was at the product launch conference of Zhiyuan Technology held on April 25 this year, when Zhiyuan Technology launched the MODI G Xiaoxian AI Marketing Brain, and announced the establishment of Shanghai's "International Consumer Brand AI Innovation Center".