Since last year, manyCorporate executivesThere was a wave of people leaving their jobs to join AI startups, but now this tide is receding.
Recently, it was reported that Tsinghua University's large model startup companyXianyuan TechnologyPersonnel changes, founder, formerJD.com AI head Zhou Bowen is no longer in charge of company affairs.
Sina Technology learned from an insider that in addition to Zhou Bowen, the company's partner and vice president of marketing Ning Ning, solution manager Xie Wei, Xianyuan Technology sales manager Pan Yin, and sales manager Zhang Xin, who was later recruited from JD.com, have all resigned. Not only that, the algorithm manager Chen Huaqing is also suspected to have resigned, and the algorithm department is currently taken over by a doctor named Zhou.
"Zhou Bowen fades out of company affairs and may take up the post of director of Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory"
Founded at the end of 2021, Xianyuan Technology is a technology service company focusing on the digitalization of enterprise innovation. The company's founding team comes from first-tier Internet companies such as JD.com, Tencent, ByteDance, Alibaba, Baidu, Xiaomi Group, and well-known technology companies such as Microsoft and IBM.The company's founder is Zhou Bowen.
Public information shows that before founding Xianyuan Technology, Zhou Bowen served as senior vice president of JD Group, chairman of the group technology committee, president of cloud and AI, and dean of JD Artificial Intelligence Research Institute. He has studied and researched artificial intelligence in the United States for nearly 20 years. He is the former dean of the Artificial Intelligence Basic Research Institute of IBM Research US headquarters and chief scientist of IBM Watson Group. He is an American citizen.
It is reported that after Zhou Bowen faded out of the company's daily affairs,The next stop may be to serve as the director of the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.The position has been vacant for six months since Tang Xiaoou, the previous director of Shanghai Pujiang Laboratory and founder of SenseTime, passed away due to illness. The Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will make a public announcement on the relevant matters in the future.
Regarding the subsequent daily affairs of Xianyuan Technology,An internal decision-making committee will be responsible forHowever, many people questioned the startup's management model through a decision-making committee: "Have you ever seen a startup use this model? How long is the decision-making and response chain?"
Questioned for "no products and no business", the iteration of self-developed large models is slow
Regarding the founder and several senior executives of Xianyuan Technology who have successively withdrawn from the company's business, the above-mentioned insider believes that the core issue is:Without products or business, the founder packaged his personal IP, and then left.. "
According to the information on the official website of Xianyuan Technology, the company's products are currently divided into two categories: AI applications and self-developed large models. Among them, AI applications mainly include MODI Mo Xiaoxian AI Marketing Brain, which was released on April 25 this year and recently went into public beta, AI commercial filming and AI video in the trial stage; self-developed large models are divided into self-developed large language model ProductGPT and multimodal large model ProductDiffusion, which have not yet been launched and publicly released.
It can be seen from this that in addition to focusing more on AI marketing and AI commercial photography at the application layer, Xianyuan Technology's product update and iteration speed is slower than the market in terms of the underlying model capabilities that current AI manufacturers are more willing to highlight.
At a time when open source big models are frequently released worldwide and domestic cloud vendors are starting to push for a "price war", it will be even more difficult for Xianyuan Technology's self-developed big models, which have not been officially announced, to stand out. In the company's main AI marketing and AI commercial shooting fields, most companies with scene and AI technology capabilities have also personally entered the field to lay out their plans, and it will be a big challenge to achieve commercial order conversion in the future.
Sina Technology has learned that in addition to founding Xianyuan Technology and holding important positions in JD.com, IBM and other institutions, Zhou Bowen is currently also the Hui Yan Chair Professor and tenured professor of the Department of Electronics at Tsinghua University, a non-executive independent director of CITIC Bank, and may be appointed director of the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He has many social identities.
In addition, in March 2023, Xianyuan Technology announced the completion of an angel round of financing of hundreds of millions of yuan, led by Qiming Venture Partners and followed by Matrix Partners. It was revealed that the company "promised high options" during personnel recruitment, but it was not finally implemented after entering, so there were also some internal personnel disputes.
The AI big model startup boom is receding, and star companies are being sold one after another
After experiencing the frenzy of generative AI,Many AI unicorn companies are lining up to sell themselves.
Just last week, Stability AI, a star large-scale model enterprise with a valuation of nearly 30 billion, reported that its capital chain was broken and it was seeking a merger. At the same time, news also came out that the leadership of another AI unicorn Adept was negotiating with Meta on the possibility of a sale or strategic cooperation.
In addition, Humane, which became famous last year with its AI hardware Pin, has now entered the ranks of seeking acquisitions. It was reported that it was in contact with a financial advisor to find a potential buyer with a target price of US$750 million to US$1 billion. Reka AI, founded by former Google Distinguished Scientist Yi Tay, has also embarked on the path of seeking acquisitions.
Domestically, in addition to the "AI Heroes List" posted by Lightyear Away which ended abruptly two months later, last year the media broke the news that a Tsinghua-affiliated AI big model company was exploring M&A opportunities at a price of 100 million US dollars while seeking financing with a valuation of 1 billion RMB. At that time, Zhipu AI had contacted the team regarding M&A matters.
Now, Xianyuan Technology, founded by celebrity founder Zhou Bowen, has once again been hit by explosive insider information about the founder's withdrawal and the resignation of partners and several senior executives.
Whether at home or abroad, after the excitement and clamor when generative AI emerged, the next stage is coming to truly test the commercialization and financing capabilities of AI companies. In this process, more and more new companies are bound to gradually exit the market. As funds continue to concentrate on the top companies, companies that lack innovation and rapid iteration capabilities will find it increasingly difficult.