Dipsyck is likely to be about two angles

Dipsyck is likely to be about two angles of the iceberg of Chinese AI. In addition to Dipsyck, prominent Chinese AI unicorns lined up.
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Dipsyck is just the beginning...Chinese AI unicorns lined up
Input 2025.02.04 AM Revised 7:05 AM Revised 2025.02.04 AM 7:43 AM

Chinese AI companies are emerging one after another, led by DeepSeek, which has announced a low-cost, high-performance AI (artificial intelligence) model. The U.S.-led competition for AI technology has begun to enter a new phase as funds from large Chinese Internet companies and academic personnel support the growth of Chinese AI.

On the 3rd, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) reported that the AI model "Kimi K1.5" released by Moonshot AI about two hours after DeepSeek unveiled "DeepSeek-R1" on the 20th also became a hot topic among AI developers around the world.

According to Moonshot AI, Kimi K1.5 has reasoning ability that surpasses U.S. Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonet and has performance comparable to that of the inference model 'o1', which OpenAI unveiled in September last year.

Moonshot AI was founded by Yang Jilin (34), a graduate of Tsinghua University, in 2023. After graduating from Tsinghua University in China, Yang earned his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technology Institute (LTI), the world's No. 1 natural language processor. His professors include Ruslan Salakutdinov, who served as Apple's AI research director, and William Cohen, Google's chief scientist.

According to CB Insights, a global market research firm, Moonshot AI's enterprise value reached $3.3 billion as of January. In addition to Moonshot AI, Zpu AI, which was established in 2019, Minimalax, which was established in 2021, and Baiquan AI, which was established in 2023, are considered unicorns (unlisted startups with an enterprise value of more than $1 billion) and are engaged in competition to develop AI models.

Moonshot AI raised $1 billion from Alibaba and other companies within a year of its establishment and later attracted investment from Tencent. Albibaba and Tencent also invested in Zpu AI, Baiquan AI and Minimalax.

Nomura Research Institute pointed out, "Large IT companies can gain the upper hand in technology competition by cooperating with startups and introducing their products, and startups can enter the ecosystem of large IT companies in addition to securing funds, making it easier to expand their application fields and access customers." Major academic institutions such as Tsinghua University, Beijing University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have also contributed to the growth of Chinese AI startups.

According to Nikkei's survey of papers adopted by the world's top three AI societies, Chinese companies and universities ranked second after the United States (37) in the number of authors last year, accounting for 31 of the top 100 institutions.

In the 'Next-Generation AI Development Plan' established in 2017, China has set a goal of becoming the center of major innovation in the world by 2030 and is accelerating research at the national level. As a result, Tsinghua University and Beijing University have succeeded in tripling the number of authors of papers adopted.

Zhejiang University, the alma mater of DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng (梁 Moon 鋒, 40), rose vertically from 89th to 6th, as the number of thesis authors surged from 34 in 2020 to 906 in 2024. Most of the key researchers who participated in the development of DeepSeek's AI model "R1" are from top universities. Tsinghua University (2nd), Beijing University (6th), Zhongshan University (65th), and Beijing Port Airport Heaven (90th) are all "national-focused universities" and are supported by the Chinese government's priority allocation of budget.

Large Chinese Internet companies are also pushing ahead with their own AI development. Alibaba claimed on the 29th that it has surpassed DeepSeek's "V3" performance by announcing the AI model "Qwen 2.5-Max." Tencent, Baidu, and Huawei are also stepping up efforts to improve AI performance.

According to China's National Internet Information Office, the number of Generative AI services registered in China has already exceeded 300. The "Dephic Shock" shows that China's AI strategy at the national level is coming to fruition, and "If more startups enter the AI technology competition in the future, the U.S. may lose its edge in AI," Nikkei said.