Source|IT Orange Author|Fok Yingxian Cover Picture|Pexels
At the moment when the capital market is generally cold, there is such a track, which attracts many academic and industry bigwigs to start their own businesses, and at the same time, it also attracts investors to bet heavily and become a warm current against the current, this track is AIGC, which can also be called a large model track. Since the advent of GPT, it seems that the boom in AI investment has not abated. With the blessing of capital, there are some companies in the industry, which not only develop rapidly themselves, but also act as "investors", raising funds and investing at the same time. Financing is because money is needed. How to spend the money when you get it, can you invest it again and make some layouts? According to the statistics of IT Orange, there are 12 large-scale model companies that have made public foreign investments, including iFLYTEK, SenseTime, Spire, Zhipu AI, Chayi Technology, Minimax and so on. Among them, the earliest is iFLYTEK, which was founded before the millennium and is also the company with the largest number of foreign investments, with more than 100 shots; The latest establishment is Minimax Xiyu Technology, founded by Yan Junjie, former vice president of SenseTime, which was established in 2021 and currently has 1 announced foreign investment. In terms of the interval between the time of initial outbound investment and the time of establishment, the differences between different companies are particularly obvious. Since its inception in 2002, Capricloud has not made its first outbound investment until 2023, with an interval of up to 21 years; In comparison, SenseTime took only 1.8 years from its inception in August 2014 to its first investment in August 2016; The new generation of large-scale AI companies such as Zhipu AI and Minimax are still very young, but the time lag between them and SenseTime is still a little longer than that of SenseTime.
SenseTime, one of the "AI Four Tigers", which took the shortest time from its establishment to its first foreign investment, was established in August 2014 and raised 11 rounds of pre-IPO financing in 2021. In 2016, it began to invest in 31 start-ups in 33 times, involving e-commerce retail, real estate, enterprise services, automobile transportation, medical health, artificial intelligence and other industries. Among them, it has made the most shots in the artificial intelligence industry, reaching 16 times, and has twice invested in two companies, Terminus, a city-level intelligent IoT platform, and Galaxy General, a multi-modal large-scale robot developer. As early as 2017, SenseTime began to lay out the artificial intelligence track, and in May 2017, it made a strategic investment in Deep Web Vision, a company focusing on computer vision and deep learning, and then deployed upstream and downstream companies in the AI industry chain at an average frequency of two per year, investing in a total of 2 basic layer AI companies, 1 technology layer AI company, and 9 application level companies (including 2 general application companies and 7 industry application companies).
Zhipu AI, a star company of the "Tsinghua Department", is also investing abroad while raising funds. It is the most active foreign investment in this wave of new large-scale model companies. Founded in June 2019, Zhipu AI raised its first capital in August 2019, and has raised a total of 8 times in the past five years. In April 2023, Zhipu AI made its first outbound investment, and so far it has made 12 outbound investments and invested in 11 companies.
Combing through the investment layout of Zhipu AI, it can be found that it has several preferences: one is biased towards investing in Tsinghua alumni enterprises. Yuan Jinhui, founder of Silicon-based Flow, Ji Yu, founder of Xingyun Integrated Circuit, Tang Xiongchao, founder of Qingcheng Jizhi, Tang Jiayu, founder of Shengshu Technology, Huo Shuai, founder of Mejia Intelligence, Zhang Yueguang, founder of Muyan Zhiyu, Tu Cunchao, founder of Power Law Intelligence, Hu Xiaohe, founder of Baseflow Technology, and Zeng Guoyang, founder of Facing Wall Intelligence, are all graduates of Tsinghua University, and Huang Minlie, founder of Lingxin Intelligence, and Wang Yu, founder of Wuwen Sky, are professors of Tsinghua University - it can be said that the investment footprint of Zhipu AI is almost all over the large-scale model projects of Tsinghua alumni entrepreneurship. Second, in terms of investment layout, it can be found that Zhipu AI prefers to invest in technology-driven AI upstream and downstream enterprises, and strives to build and improve the AI ecosystem, and the companies it invests in cover the entire industry chain such as large model algorithms, computing power services, AI chips, and industry applications. In the current AI track, which is becoming more and more volatile and price wars are frequent, compared with those large manufacturers with extensive data resources, Zhipu AI wants to stand out in the "100 model war", actively carry out the upstream and downstream layout of the industrial chain, and make up for the shortcomings with technological iteration breakthroughs, which is also a way to play. Montage Technology was founded in 2004, received investment from Intel in 2006, IPO in the U.S. in 2013, was privatized in 2014 by a joint venture between Shanghai Pudong Technology Investment Co., Ltd. and China Electronics Investment Holdings Co., Ltd. for US$693 million, and was relisted on the STAR Market in July 2019, becoming one of the first 25 companies to be listed on the STAR Market. Montage Technology began to invest abroad after its listing on the STAR Market, and the earliest outbound investment was a 100 million yuan B+ round investment in Zhiyu Technology with China Merchants Securities and Yichen Capital in 2020. The highest-sumest, and most recent, outbound investment event was in September 2023, when Montage Technology, together with Xinhua Capital and Zhongguancun Science City, made a cornerstone round investment in 4Paradigm, an AI technology and service provider. At the same time, IT Juzi noticed that Montage Technology invested 200 million yuan in 2020 to subscribe to a special equity investment fund initiated by SMIC Juyuan and started an LP.
There are also some large-scale model companies, and their outbound investment activities have both commonalities and differences. For example, the outbound investment activities of most companies only began to be active after 2020, and the outbound investment of listed companies such as Fengyuzhu, Danghong Technology, and Yuncong Technology was launched after listing; From the perspective of investment rounds, most companies are biased towards early-stage investment, mainly angel rounds and Series A. Of course, there are exceptions, different companies have different styles, such as Fengyuzhu's foreign investment is a strategic investment, and Danghong Technology's two shots are B rounds.
With the continuous development of AIGC, the investment layout and strategic choices of these companies will not only affect their own development, but may also shape the direction of the industry.
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