Kai-Fu Lee's LLM Startup Introduces Open Source Model, Valued at $1B
Kai-Fu Lee, the computer scientist and author of "AI Superpowers," has launched a new venture called 01.AI with the aim of developing a large language model (LLM) for the Chinese market. The startup has released its first model, the open-source Yi-34B, which has been well-received and outperformed larger models in a ranking by Hugging Face. With backing from investors including Sinovation Ventures and Alibaba Cloud, 01.AI plans to build a proprietary model for commercial products while continuing to open source some models. The company has already amassed a team of over 100 employees, including LLM experts from major tech firms, and has stockpiled GPUs in anticipation of U.S. sanctions. The ultimate goal is to create an ecosystem where developers can easily build applications using the LLM technology.