Meituan Co-Founder Wang Huiwen’s Chinese Version of OpenAI Receives Support from Wang Xing

The AI startup based by Wang Huiwen, who retired as senior vice-president of the Chinese meals supply firm Meituan in 2020, has begun a brand new enterprise. On March 8, Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan, revealed that he would take part within the A spherical financing of Wang Huiwen’s startup and function a director.

Wang Huiwen introduced on February 13 that he plans to take a position $50 million out of his personal pocket in an organization he included in Beijing in July 2018 to host the brand new enterprise. 25% of the shares of the brand new entity, with a valuation of $200 million, are held by Wang Huiwen’s funds. He is aiming to construct a Chinese model of OpenAI. Other prime enterprise capitalists have subscribed for $230 million within the subsequent spherical of financing of the entity.

Wang Xing commented on his funding, “The AI model makes me excited about the huge productivity to be created and worried about its future impact on the whole world. Wang Huiwen and I have been working together for nearly 20 years. Since he is determined to embrace this big wave (brought about by ChatGPT and OpenAI), I must support it.”

Wang Huiwen met Wang Xing on his first day of college in 1997, when each of them have been attending Tsinghua University in China. Quickly, they grew to become roommates and shut pals. They co-founded a social networking service named Xiaonei, and Meituan collectively. In Wang Xing’s personal phrases, “Wang Huiwen and I are classmates and roommates with common interests, partners who work together to start businesses, comrades who fight side by side, and lifelong friends.”

Wang Huiwen joined Meituan within the preliminary phases in December 2010. From Group shopping for, take-out, to journey, catering, Wang Huiwen led many of Meituan‘s new companies from the very beginnings. In 2020, Wang Huiwen retired from Meituan on the age of 42. At that point, he mentioned that he would proceed to function a director and a lifelong honorary marketing consultant of the corporate. After retirement, he went to Tsinghua University to show a category named “Internet Product Management”, and by the top of 2022, he was additionally studying about Web3 and crypto.

SEE ALSO: Science and Technology Minister in China Talks about ChatGPT Using Football as Metaphor

According to 36Kr, Wang Huiwen’s announcement of constructing an OpenAI challenge in China was posted at a dinner. At that point, Dai Yusen and Liu Yuan, two companions of ZhenFund, and Li Zhifei, founder of tech agency Mobvoi, had dinner with Wang Huiwen. The buyers of the subsequent spherical of financing talked about by Wang Huiwen are anticipated to incorporate ZhenFund and Source Code Capital.

In addition to Wang Xing, on February 15, Liu Jiang, vp of the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, mentioned that he had determined to affix Wang Huiwen’s group and known as on different AI specialists to affix in.

Sign up as we speak for five free articles month-to-month!