Text丨Financial Gossip Female Contributing Author: Tiema···The large model industry is also "progressing". No, the founder of Kimi's parent company, Dark Side of the Moon, has been "entered" into the vortex of business war. According to media reports, Dark Side of the Moon founder

Article | Financial Gossip Female Contributing Author: Tiema

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The big model industry is also "promising". No, the founder of Kimi's parent company, Dark Side of the Moon, has "Being entered" into the whirlpool of business war .

There are media reports that Dark Side of the Moon founder Yang Zhilin and co-founder and CTO Zhang Yutao were brought for arbitration in Hong Kong, China by investors from the company’s circular intelligence period. The relevant electronic arbitration application was submitted to hkiac (Hong Kong International Arbitration Center).

Those who applied for arbitration are some investors of Circular Intelligence, a company that Yang Zhilin previously participated in founding, including: Jinshajiang Venture Capital, Jingya Capital, Boyu Capital, Huashan Capital and Wanwu Capital.

Currently, Yang Zhilin and Zhang Yutao have entrusted Mingde Law Firm to handle arbitration matters. "We believe that this matter lacks both legal basis and factual basis, and our firm will defend it in accordance with the law." said lawyer David Morrison, senior partner of Mingde Law Firm.

1.

/ A Dark Side of the Moon "investor" who did not invest? /

html What exactly happened in Dark Side of May? In short, it is a dilemma that many potential entrepreneurs have encountered. When a company achieves impressive achievements in a certain field, the previous investors cannot sit still and want to share the fruits. However, these investors were not optimistic at first and paid very little or not even a penny.

Let’s start with some popular science. The protagonist of this application for arbitration, Loop Intelligence, was founded in 2016. It is an AI software provider for enterprise marketing customer service.

was originally established by three co-founders of Yang Zhilin, Zhang Yutao and Chen Qicong. All three of them are technical backgrounds and met at Tsinghua University. In the early stages of circular intelligence, these three people shared equity equally, with Chen Qicong as CEO, Zhang Yutao as CTO, and Yang Zhilin as the person in charge of AI and products.

We take the time back to 2 years ago. The large model industry at that time was undergoing new changes as soon as we woke up. The process of large model entrepreneurship entering the market and attracting financing was urgent.

According to media reports, insiders revealed that in January 2023, Yang Zhilin planned to leave Circular Intelligence to start an independent business, and received the support of Circular Intelligence CEO Chen Qicong and the company’s board of directors. The two parties reached an agreement, and Dark Side of the Moon would give Circular Intelligence equity in return. Later, Chen Qicong sent a notification email to shareholders, and the board of directors also approved the plan.

Some of these investors chose to continue investing in Dark Side of the Moon and became shareholders of both companies. Other investors did not invest because it was not looking good for the time being. They held shares intelligently through circulation and therefore became indirect investors.

The story should have a happy ending at this point:

From the public information, we can see that Circular Intelligence and some of the investors behind it obtained the founding equity of Dark Side of the Moon, which was also described as Dark Side of the Moon in the promotion. founding shareholder. They can wait for Dark Side of the Moon to develop better and better, and quietly become an "angel investor" with a valuation of tens of billions.

However, as Dark Side of the Moon developed better and better, the mentality of investors who did not continue to invest in Dark Side of the Moon in the early stages of Circular Intelligence seemed to have "collapsed".

2.

/ Investment is slow, "picking peaches" rushes ahead /

In the spring of 2023, Dark Side of the Moon received angel round financing. Investment institutions included previous old shareholders ZhenFund and Sequoia China. The valuation at that time was US$300 million; in July of the same year, Dark Side of the Moon received funding from Meituan Series A financing from investors such as Longzhu and Lanchi Venture Capital.

In February this year, Dark Side of the Moon received a new round of financing of US$1 billion initiated by Sequoia, Alibaba, , Meituan, , Xiaohongshu, etc. This financing is the first large-scale model startup company in China to obtain since the emergence of chatgpt. The largest single round of financing received, which also caused the valuation of Dark Side of the Moon to soar to US$2.5 billion.

In the middle of this year, Dark Side of the Moon received over US$300 million in Series B financing, with participation from , Tencent, , Gaorong Venture Capital, etc. The post-financing valuation will reach approximately US$3 billion.

By this time, Dark Side of the Moon is already competing for the top spot among the "Six Little Tigers of AI".

According to data from the new AI product list, Kimi’s website had more than 27 million visits in October, ranking first among similar products in China and sixth globally.

According to Wired Insight, in March 2024, after Alibaba invested heavily, Dark Side of the Moon further stepped out of the circle. Some investors in Circular Intelligence believed that the initial equity they received was too small and wanted to increase the amount, and the amount was huge.

In fact, if you think about it, you can understand that after the huge expansion of the valuation of Dark Side of the Moon, there is a huge gap in the growth of new companies compared to Circular Intelligence. After all, everyone knows kimi and the dark side of the moon, but who knows about cyclic intelligence?

So, it’s time to pick peaches...

According to media reports, some investors in Circular Intelligence believed that the initial equity they received was too small and needed compensation, and began to frequently play "little tricks" against Dark Side of the Moon and spread rumors about the company. Prevent new investors from entering. For example, an investigation by 21st Century Business Herald showed that the website of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center states that arbitration hearings are conducted in private and awards are usually not made public. Originally, these disputes would not be leaked to the public, helping to maintain business relationships.

However, there are not many "fat sheep" in the current primary market. It is not easy to find one, and it is "reasonable" to gather some wool.

In fact, as the "indirect investors" of Dark Side of the Moon, although the capital behind Circular Intelligence has no obligation to help Dark Side of the Moon, they can enjoy the fruits without causing trouble. But at this time, isn’t it too late to say “sour grapes”? Even the company Circular Intelligence cannot escape the fate of being "used as a gun"!

3.

/ Large model companies need "patient capital" /

Objectively speaking, the large model industry is still in the early stages of development and has to pass one hurdle after another.

In terms of money, the large digital model lama+3 released by meta uses 24,000 Nvidia high-end chips; Tesla also hoards 35,000 Nvidia chips for AI training. h100gpu; Large domestic model companies also need money for pre-training, which requires the support of capital behind them.

Especially now, the big model Six Little Tigers are competing for the cake with the giants. When startups like Dark Side of the Moon have not yet stabilized their self-generation, one of the most difficult questions is "where is the next financing?", indirect investment Fang’s operation is hard to understand. Of course, fortunately, both old and new investors in Dark Side of the Moon still choose to “support” it.

Secondly, the future development and continuous implementation of large models require patient capital and large model companies to explore together. When a group of patient and innovation-focused capital settles down and "runs" with hard technologies and entrepreneurs, this should be the "consensus" of investors behind large model industries.

I hope that domestic technology entrepreneurs can be less involved in such business wars and continue to contribute more to their innovations and breakthroughs in technology and products.