As his health gradually recovered, Wang Huiwen invested in an AI startup company.
Qixinbao app shows that Beijing Harbor City Technology Co., Ltd. has recently undergone industrial and commercial changes (referred to as "Haigang City Technology"), with new shareholders Wang Huiwen, Chen Liang, and Ningbo Meishan Bonded Port Area Weijia Investment Management Partnership (Limited Partnership) , the company's registered capital increased from approximately RMB 1.1596 million to approximately RMB 1.2152 million.
It is reported that the legal representative of Harbor City Technology is Yang Jun. Currently, he has an app that is only available on Android - Sperm Whale. This is a to c application that allows users to chat and interact with AI-created "characters" in real time. .
This is Wang Huiwen’s second move in AI investment this year. Just in January this year, Wang Huiwen invested in the latest entrepreneurial project of oneflow founder Yuan Jinhui-Silicon-based flow.
Yang Jun is also an old "comrade" of Wang Huiwen. He can be found on campus, Fanfou, and Meituan. After fading out of Meituan in 2014, Yang Jun joined Bat Capital and chose to become an angel investor. In 2019, Yang Jun devoted himself to entrepreneurship again and founded the community group buying e-commerce "Squirrel Pinpin", which received multiple rounds of investment from Bat Capital, IDG, Hillhouse, Heyu, Yunjiu and Meituan's former COO Qian Jiawei.
Now Yang Jun chooses to start a business again in the AI application layer, and Wang Huiwen chooses to support it.
Chinese version character.ai
For this investment, Wang Huiwen did not choose the large model track that had previously had extremely high financial and technical barriers. Instead, he turned to AI applications facing the c-end market. This is Wang Huiwen's area of expertise. In addition, AI applications in the direction of "emotional companionship" have also been verified to be the fastest to be implemented, with high fault tolerance and low threshold. Shazeer, founder of
unicorn company Character AI, once said: “Emotional links are very important, but it is like raising a dog. Although it does not have the language ability to communicate with humans, people think that pets are important emotional support for them. Therefore, making emotional products may not require model characters with extremely high levels of intelligence, and whether they can express coherent emotions may not be as important as people think. "
is just like this. There are a hundred flowers blooming in this field at home and abroad. Such as character.ai, pi, replica, talkie, dream island, qq chat partner, Hoshino, etc.
Among them, character.ai is currently one of the most successful overseas C-side applications. In June 2023, the number of visits reached 280 million, and users stayed for an average of 28 minutes each time, compared to only 8 minutes on chatgpt. Its functions include AI roles such as agent-oriented assistants, psychologists, celebrities, virtual characters, UGC customization, etc. It has also launched AI group chats and original UGC communities with evaluation and scoring functions. Both
talkie and Hoshino are launched by domestic startup company Minimax, focusing on overseas and domestic markets respectively. The core gameplay is also to create an AI chat robot and customize the personality, appearance and voice. There are 20 million types of AI NPCs in Starfield, ranging from innocent and overbearing presidents to mysterious female assassins. You can create and choose freely. These AI messages are responded to in seconds and are online 24 hours a day. Each interaction unlocks exclusive plots.
It is worth mentioning that these two companies are highly sought after by the capital market.
character.ai’s most recent round of financing occurred in March 2023, a $150 million Series A round led by well-known venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). After this round of financing, the company's valuation reached US$1 billion and it was officially promoted to a unicorn company. After
, there were reports that Google was in investment talks with character.ai and planned to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, which could value it at more than $5 billion. Needless to say,
minimax, as a hot domestic AI rookie, completed US$250 million in financing last year, and its valuation at that time exceeded US$1.2 billion. In March this year, there were rumors that Alibaba would lead a new round of investment in minimax 6 billion in financing, with the latest valuation reaching $2.5 billion. There is also a row of top investors standing behind
minimax, including Tencent, Alibaba, miHoYo, Hillhouse Ventures, idg Capital, Yunqi Capital, Mingshi Capital, etc. On the one hand,
is an area in which it is good at and has the fastest implementation, and on the other hand, it is extremely popular in the capital market. Lao Wang’s choice this time seems to be much more cost-effective and feasible.
However, compared with these mature software at home and abroad, Sperm Whale app is still a little late in taking action, but with Wang Huiwen’s blessing, it may not be possible for the latter to arrive first. Currently, its official website has only one interface, and the Android version of the application is still in the testing stage.
picture / from the official website
picture / from the android version of the application screenshot
The four veterans of Meituan have a rare reunion
It is different from going it alone and forming a team when starting a business in the large model field last year. This time, Lao Wang is well prepared. , in addition to founder Yang Jun, new shareholders Chen Liang and Weijia Capital also have a close relationship with Wang Huiwen.
Chen Liang is the senior vice president of Meituan who retired last year and is a member of the s-team, the highest decision-making body. After his resignation, there were reports that he would devote himself to entrepreneurship related to AI large models and had already contacted a small number of investment institutions. According to
public information, Chen Liang was Wang Xing’s middle school classmate. In 2005, Wang Xing, Wang Huiwen, Chen Liang and others founded China’s first college student social networking site, Xiaonei.com. Chen Liang was mainly responsible for operation and maintenance. After Xiaonei.com was resold to Thousand Oaks Interactive Group, Wang Xing founded Fanfou.com.
Chen Liang founded Taofang.com with Wang Huiwen and Lai Binqiang. When Taofang.com merged with Meituan.com in 2011, he also joined Meituan.com and partnered with Wang Xing again.
Chen Liang’s recognized achievements within Meituan consist of three parts. The first is that he “personally wrote the first line of code for the Android version of Meituan” in 2011 and is the hero of Meituan’s mobile transformation; the second is that he founded Meituan Wine & Travel, withstood the pressure from giants such as Ctrip Qunar and other giants, rose up step by step, creating the future cash cow business of the Meituan empire; third, during the heyday of Meituan Wine & Travel, it devoted itself to the fresh food business, and then created Meituan Select .
Another actual controller behind Weijia Capital is Meituan’s “Key Mr.” Qian Jiawei. In 2019, Gan Jiawei personally invested in Jia Capital and became the largest shareholder of this investment institution.
Of course, Gan Jiawei is best known as the 67th employee of Alibaba and the coo of Meituan. At the same time, he is also a member of the famous "China Railway Supply Army". In 2011, after being invited six times by Wang Xing, Gan Jiawei chose to join Meituan as COO, bringing his ground combat experience and organizational management methodology to Meituan. He not only helped Meituan win the group buying war, but also expanded its advantages. There are several new battlefields in wine hotels and takeaways.
He once said that if entrepreneurship is classified from 0 to 100, what I am good at is from 10 to 100. Wang Huiwen also said something similar: "I like the pleasure of going from 0 to 1, but I am not interested in things going from 10 to 100." It seems that they have tacitly complemented each other in some way.
Yang Jun, the legal representative of Harbor City Technology invested by Wang Huiwen this time, is also one of the founding teams of Meituan. He also participated in the establishment of Xiaonei.com and Fanfou in the early days. After
left Meituan, he had rich experience. He was not only active in the capital market, but also started his own business many times. For example, in 2018, he launched the blockchain taxi application "Taxis". In the same year, he entered the community group buying field and founded Squirrel Pin. However, these two entrepreneurial ventures ultimately came to nothing.
It is worth mentioning that when Yang Jun founded Squirrel Pinpin, he received investment from Qian Jiawei. This time Qian Jiawei chose to work side by side with him again, and his relationship and trust are also evident.
In addition to investment actions, at the beginning of this month, Meituan founder Wang Xing just announced that Wang Huiwen is gradually recovering from health and will serve as a consultant to Meituan part of the time. He also said: "Lao Wang will use his experience and wisdom to support me and everyone in the company's strategy, culture and talent echelon construction, as well as technological innovation and new business exploration."
Wang Huiwen was not defeated by the disease; AI's dream continues, bless him.
