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Alibaba is reportedly becoming a member of as a lead investor within the newest funding spherical for Chinese language AI startup MiniMax, the second main funding deal that the e-commerce big has made within the rising sector in 2024.
China Star Market, the native media outlet that first reported the information, famous that the financing has but to be finalized, whereas a Tuesday report by Bloomberg stated that Shanghai-based MiniMax is in search of at the very least $600 million.
Why it issues: Regardless of Alibaba’s cloud computing division’s focus by itself giant language mannequin, Tongyi Qianwen, the corporate stays actively engaged with exterior investments, casting a large internet because it appears to be like to extend its bets on potential leaders within the nation’s synthetic intelligence sector.
Particulars: Minimax, based by former vp of SenseTime Yan Junjie in December 2021, has already launched providers akin to ChatGPT. It additionally supplies varied LLM capabilities for Chinese language phrase processing software program WPS and the lifestyle-sharing platform Xiaohongshu.
- The transfer comes after Alibaba led fundraising for Moonshot AI earlier this yr, elevating over $1 billion and making it the most recent AI unicorn in China. Within the document funding deal for Moonshot AI, Alibaba not solely supported a lot of the funding but in addition contributed via computing energy providers. This transfer echoes Microsoft’s funding in OpenAI, the place a good portion was allotted via cloud computing providers, based on CNBC.
- Two of China’s main synthetic intelligence startups – Zhipu AI and Sogou founder-built Baichuan AI – additionally acquired funding from Alibaba in 2023.
Context: “Synthetic intelligence” was talked about thrice on this yr’s authorities work report, delivered by China’s Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday. Li highlighted ongoing improvements within the subject since 2023, whereas additionally stressing the necessity to “deepen analysis and growth functions of synthetic intelligence” this yr, signaling the Chinese language management’s need to speed up the event of “new productiveness”.
- Representatives from the expertise sector additionally mentioned AI of their proposals for the so-called Two Periods, the Chinese language authorities’s annual plenary conferences. As an illustration, Lei Jun, Chairman and CEO of Xiaomi, prompt integrating AI literacy schooling into the nine-year obligatory schooling curriculum and introducing AI normal schooling programs.
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