Alibaba has been leveraging its vast cloud computing infrastructure to become a leading investor in China’s generative artificial intelligence start-ups, offering them credits to use the scarce network resources needed to train models rather than conventional cash-for-equity funding.
The Chinese ecommerce giant is trying to replicate the success of Microsoft’s investment in the US leader, OpenAI, by taking stakes in prominent start-ups Moonshot, Zhipu, MiniMax and 01.ai. They have all been developing local versions of US applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Character.ai’s avatar chatbot.
The Kimi intelligent assistant launched by Moonshot AI in March. (CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images) (Costfoto via Getty Images)
In one example, Alibaba led a $1bn fundraising round in Moonshot AI that valued the start-up at $2.5bn in February. It put $800mn into the developer of the fast-growing Kimi AI chatbot, with just under half coming in the form of cloud computing credits, according to two people familiar with the deal. Alibaba declined to comment.
Over the past year, Alibaba chief executive Eddie Yongming Wu has personally overseen investments in the four leading AI start-ups, according to people familiar with the matter, as the company seeks to reinvent itself as an AI innovator.
