Behind China's new AI is also a game of connections and founders, determining 80% of a company's success or failure. It's been discovered that Alibaba has invested in half of China's AI sector. 1. MiniMax (Overseas Expansion + Hit Apps) - Business Model: Model + Hit Apps, Top Tier Audio/Video Developer - Founders: Yan Junjie, former Vice President and Product Manager at SenseTime; Zhang Qianchuan, former Product Manager at ByteDance (parent company of TikTok). - Investors: Alibaba (largest external shareholder), Tencent, Hillhouse Capital (lead investor in the first round), Sequoia China, etc. - Hidden Backing: Liu Wei (Dawei Ge), a key early investor in miHoYo, currently serves as a non-executive director of MiniMax. miHoYo not only provided funding but also a large amount of game scenario testing data, allowing MiniMax to stand out in multimodal interaction and role-playing capabilities. 2. The Dark Side of the Moon (C-end Traffic + Long Text) - Business Model: Kimi AI Assistant, focusing on office and programming. Subscription Model - Founder: Yang Zhilin, a graduate of Tsinghua University's Yao Class, previously worked at Google and Meta, and is the designer of important architectures such as Transformer-XL and XLNet. - Investors: Alibaba (lead investor in Series A+), Meituan, Tencent, Xiaomi, Xiaohongshu, Sequoia China, ZhenFund - Hidden Backing: Alibaba holds a 30% stake, making it its core computing power and financial supporter. Zhang Yutong (former partner at GSR Ventures) brings top-tier VC vision and connections, enabling Kimi to complete rapid fundraising in 2024-2025, and its cash reserves remain the highest in 2026. 3. Zhipu AI (Academic + All-Round) - Business Model: Coding Package + MaaS (Model as a Service) + Industry Private Deployment - Founders: All Tsinghua University graduates; Zhang Peng (CEO): PhD in Computer Science from Tsinghua University; Tang Jie (Key Figure): Chief Scientist. Professor Yang Zhilin of the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University mentored the team at Lunar Dark Side. - Investment Institutions: Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan, Xiaomi, Ant Group, Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia China, State-owned Assets Background - Hidden Backing: Government and State-owned Assets Background; Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, Zhuhai Huafa, and Chengdu and Hangzhou State-owned Assets provided crucial assistance during the IPO period. 4. Leap Forward (Trillion-Dollar Model + Hardware-Software Integration) - Business Model: Hardware Licensing + Embodied Intelligence - Founder: Jiang Daxin, former Global Vice President of Microsoft and Chief Scientist of Microsoft Research Asia - Investment Institutions: Tencent Investment, Qiming Venture Partners, Shanghai State-owned Capital - Hidden Backing: Deep cooperation with Geely Automobile and OPPO; Megvii Technology + Qianli Technology (formerly Lifan Motors). 5. Zero One Everything (Enterprise Focus + Agent) - Business Model: Enterprise-level Agent, AI Agent Intelligent System - Founder: Kai-Fu Lee: Chairman and CEO. Chairman of Innovation Works, formerly a global vice president at Microsoft, Google, and Apple. - Investors: Alibaba, Innovation Works, Shunwei Capital - Hidden backing: Some members of the pre-trained algorithm team were acquired by Alibaba Cloud at the end of 2024.