Alibaba is reportedly becoming a member of as a top investor within the untouched investment spherical for Chinese language AI startup MiniMax, the second one main funding offer that the e-commerce gigantic has made within the rising sector in 2024.
China Famous person Marketplace, the native media outlet that first reported the scoop, famous that the financing has but to be finalized, generation a Tuesday record by means of Bloomberg mentioned that Shanghai-based MiniMax is looking for no less than $600 million.
Why it issues: Regardless of Alibaba’s cloud computing segment’s focal point by itself massive language type, Tongyi Qianwen, the corporate rest actively occupied with exterior investments, casting a large web because it appears to be like to extend its bets on attainable leaders within the nation’s synthetic insigt sector.
Main points: Minimax, based by means of former vice chairman of SenseTime Yan Junjie in December 2021, has already introduced products and services similar to ChatGPT. It additionally supplies diverse LLM functions for Chinese language pledge processing tool WPS and the lifestyle-sharing platform Xiaohongshu.
The journey comes then Alibaba led fundraising for Moonshot AI previous this yr, elevating over $1 billion and making it the untouched AI unicorn in China. Within the report investment offer for Moonshot AI, Alibaba now not most effective supported lots of the investment but additionally contributed via computing energy products and services. This journey echoes Microsoft’s funding in OpenAI, the place a good portion used to be allotted via cloud computing products and services, in step with CNBC.
Two of China’s synthetic insigt startups – Zhipu AI and Sogou founder-built Baichuan AI – additionally won investment from Alibaba in 2023.
Context: “Artificial intelligence” used to be discussed 3 times on this yr’s executive paintings record, delivered by means of China’s Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday. Li highlighted ongoing inventions within the ground since 2023, generation additionally stressing the wish to “deepen research and development applications of artificial intelligence” this yr, signaling the Chinese language management’s want to boost up the improvement of “new productivity”.
Representatives from the generation sector additionally mentioned AI of their proposals for the so-called Two Classes, the Chinese language executive’s annual plenary conferences. As an example, Lei Jun, Chairman and CEO of Xiaomi, urged integrating AI literacy training into the nine-year obligatory training curriculum and introducing AI normal training classes.
