According to sources familiar with the matter, as cited by Interface News and Sci-Tech Daily, theUniversal large modelStart-up Projects MiniMax A new round of large-scaleFinancingAli was a core investor in the project.(Venture capitalist who invested the most in a round of financing). Previously, MiniMax has completed 3 rounds of financing, including Tencent, Miha Tour and other investors. As of press time, MiniMax and Ali did not respond to the news.
And not so long ago.Another large modeling startup, Dark Side of the Moon, has also announced the completion of a $1 billion (IT Home note: currently about 7.21 billion yuan) financing round., with investors reportedly including Ali as well. Reports suggest that most of the money in Dark Side of the Moon's large funding round came from Ali, which makes Ali the institution's largest shareholder outside of the Dark Side of the Moon team after this round. Moreover, a portion of this investment from Ali belongs to Arithmetic Payments.
MiniMax's latest round of financing is still in progress, and the final amount has not yet been fully determined, people familiar with the matter said, "But it will also be a big financing like Dark Side of the Moon." The report also said that of the two recent large-scale financings for domestic big models, theMost of the amount came from Ali's contribution.
After the start of the year.Ali's investment strategy in big domestic models is becoming "more aggressive".The frequency and size of the amount of money have risen significantly. Prior to this, Ali has invested in Baichuan Intelligence, Smart Spectrum AI, and Zero One Everything.
Last June MiniMax was rumored to be about to close a funding round totaling more than $250 million (currently about RMB 1.802 billion), which would value the company at about $1.2 billion (currently about RMB 8.652 billion).
MiniMax was founded in 2021 by a number of former employees of ShangTech, including John Yan, former vice president of ShangTech and vice president of ShangTech Research Institute. The company is working on an AI solution similar to ChatGPT.