ZhenFund is a seed fund founded by former entrepreneurs to invest in the most promising innovators. New Oriental co-founders Bob Xiaoping Xu and Victor Qiang Wang established ZhenFund in 2011 in collaboration with Sequoia Capital China. ZhenFund now has a network of over 800 portfolio companies, including over 30 unicorns based in China.  We believe that great businesses start with exceptional founding teams. We are dedicated to helping our entrepreneurs build successful companies by providing them with mentorship and the best resources available. Some of our services include biannual demo days to top Chinese VCs, ZhenHR services, marketing and PR consulting, as well as fundraising. Our strong and large CEO network also facilitates entrepreneurs helping each other, especially via our WeChat platform.  ZhenFund has been ranked as the “#1 Early-Stage Investment Firm” for six years. Bob Xiaoping Xu, Founder of ZhenFund, has been named on the Midas List since 2016 and ranked #11 in 2019. Anna Fang, Founding Partner and CEO of ZhenFund, has been named on the Midas List since 2019 and made her 4th appearance as #12, and #1 on Midas Seed List in 2022.

ZhenFund

HongShan is a VC firm focused on seed-stage, mid-stage, late-stage, and growth investments in the fintech sector. HongShan has offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Shenzhen. Over the past nine years, Sequoia Capital China has an impressive and diverse portfolio comprising about 300 dynamic companies that deliver high returns on investment using differentiated technologies and innovative business models, including Alibaba, VIPshop.com, Sina.com, Didi, JD.com, Ourpalm, Qihoo 360, Jumei, Momo, SINNET, Dianping.com, Meituan, Meilishuo, Toutiao, AutoNavi, Ganji.com, DJI, VanceInfo, Noah Private Wealth Management, Wanda Cinemas, Alibaba Pictures, Plateno Hotels Group, Deppon Logistics, ZTO Express, Beta Pharma, Snibe Diagnostic, BGI, WEGO, and Yuwell Medical.

HongShan

Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere.  They enable businesses to transform the way they market, sell, operate, and improve their efficiencies. They provide the technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help merchants, brands, and other businesses to leverage the power of new technology to engage with their users and customers and operate in a more efficient way. Their businesses are comprised of core commerce, cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, and innovation initiatives. In addition, Ant Financial, a company in which they have agreed to acquire a 33% equity stake, provides payment and financial services to consumers and merchants on their platforms. An ecosystem has developed around their platforms and businesses that consists of consumers, merchants, brands, retailers, other businesses, third-party service providers, and strategic alliance partners.

Alibaba Group

Meituan develops and operates a platform providing retail and online group buying services. It retails and delivers Chinese food from local restaurants online. It operates a social commerce website that offers online group discounts for movie tickets, groceries, food, restaurants, entertainment, and health/fitness sectors. Zhang Tao founded Meituan Group in 2010 that became Meituan-Dianping in December 2015, with its headquarters in Beijing in China. Meituan-Dianping officially changed its name to Meituan in September 2020.

Meituan

Xiaohongshu is a lifestyle-sharing platform for users to share positive energy and good life through the sharing of text, pictures, and videos. Xiaohongshu offers an overseas shopping tip app. Xiaohongshu started its business by helping overseas travelers to draft a shopping list before they hit the roads. But with the aggregation of more UGC content, the service is transforming into a community for those who are passionate about fashion and shopping and want to know more about these fields even though they do not have overseas traveling plans on their schedules.

Xiaohongshu

Moonshot AI

MoonShot AI seeks solutions in transforming energy into intelligence and generating intelligence with users through its product offerings. The key members of the founding team have been actively involved in the research and development of numerous prominent models, including Google Gemini, and Google Bard.

Based in China and known in Chinese as “Yuezhi Anmian,” Moonshot AI launched its smart chatbot, “Kimi Chat”, in October 2023. The chatbot is built on an in-house large language model (LLM) named “Moonshot.” The model can process as many as 200,000 Chinese characters in a context window, claiming to surpass OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. Kimi Chat is capable of accessing the internet, summarizing web pages, writing game code, and assisting with various tasks like document summarization and analysis. It is available across web and mobile platforms.&nbsp;

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Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

China’s Moonshot AI Scales Back Overseas Operations, Report Says

Moonshot AI is a Beijing-based artificial intelligence company specializing in the development of large language models (LLMs) and conversational AI solutions. Founded in April 2023 by Yang Zhilin, Zhou Xinyu, and Wu Yuxin, the company has quickly established itself as a leader in AI innovation. Moonshot AI's flagship product is Kimi, an advanced chatbot built on the company's self-developed Kimi LLM. The Kimi chatbot, launched in October 2023, initially could process up to 200,000 Chinese characters in a single conversation. In March 2024, Moonshot AI announced that Kimi's capacity had been expanded to handle up to 2 million Chinese characters in a single prompt, surpassing the capabilities of other domestic AI tools. This long-context processing ability is a key differentiator for the company. Moonshot AI's LLM, which has been trained on over 100 billion parameters, is comparable to offerings from other major Chinese tech companies. The company's technology is designed to cater to various user groups, including researchers, students, programmers, content creators, financial analysts, and legal practitioners, offering assistance with tasks such as information processing, content creation, and analysis.
Key customers and partnerships
Moonshot AI has garnered significant attention and investment from major Chinese technology companies. In February 2024, the company raised over USD 1 billion in a funding round led by Alibaba Group, with participation from other investors including HongShan (formerly Sequoia China), Meituan, and Xiaohongshu. This investment valued Moonshot AI at approximately USD 2.5 billion. In August 2024, the company's valuation reportedly increased to USD 3.3 billion following Tencent's participation in a USD 300 million funding round. These investments from industry giants reflect confidence in Moonshot AI's technology and leadership. The company's Kimi chatbot is available via web, mobile app, and WeChat mini-program, indicating a focus on reaching a wide user base in China.

Based in China and known in Chinese as “Yuezhi Anmian,” Moonshot AI launched its smart chatbot, “Kimi Chat”, in October 2023. The chatbot is built on an in-house large language model (LLM) named “Moonshot.” The model can process as many as 200,000 Chinese characters in a context window, claiming to surpass OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. Kimi Chat is capable of accessing the internet, summarizing web pages, writing game code, and assisting with various tasks like document summarization and analysis. It is available across web and mobile platforms.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsIn February 2024, the company is reported to have generated 2.97 million visits recording an increase of 105.8% MoM.&nbsp;

DeckRobot is a platform compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint that leverages AI to transform raw slides into enterprise-ready presentations. DeckRobot AI transforms draft slides into professional, on-brand slides by adapting graphics from a vast library of slide examples. Users can apply an unlimited number of styles to any slide deck, including old documents, client materials, or web-sourced slides.DeckRobot offers enhancements for individual slides, such as adding approved icons and images, object alignment, slide resizing, and text validation through AI checks. DeckRobot's plugin acts as a time-saving tool for PowerPoint users, reducing manual work and potentially saving up to 80% of working time. The plugin emphasizes creating visually appealing presentations that adhere to company brand guidelines while maintaining content quality.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company reportedly worked with 70% of the largest consulting and audit companies.

DeckRobot

Based in Italy, Contents.com is a generative AI-powered multimedia creation tool directed at marketing teams, bloggers, publishers, web agencies, ecommerce sites, and large corporations looking to scale content output. The company operates as a SaaS platform that provides tools to support the entire content creation workflow, combining AI-generated output with manual finishing. Contents.com’s features include:1) Industry trends: Uses AI to provide an overview of popular content trends during a specified time period2) AI Chat: A natural language chatbot that can answer questions on any topic or be used to generate content ideas3) AI Writer: Generates content based on a selected template, including blog posts, social media posts, product descriptions, marketing emails, search engine optimized content, and summarized and rephrased content4) AI Art: Generates images based on text inputs, a selected style, and destination content type5) Text to Audio: Converts text documents into audio, with several AI voices available for selection and generates text transcripts from audio input6) AI Translation: Translates content into 25+ languages (January 2024) and offers human translation7) Professional writing services: Completion and review of AI-generated content or fully outsourced content creation by human writersContents.com also offers a customizable enterprise solution, enabling large organizations to automate their content creation processes.The firm claims that its solution can generate content 10x faster.In April 2023, Contents.com acquired Scribeur, its main French competitor, expanding its customer base to include major French and European brands. In the same month, the firm also acquired translation company Traduzione.it. In addition, in May 2023, the company acquired Scribox, an Italian content marketing marketplace, to leverage Scribox's expertise in custom content creation, SEO, and social media marketing.Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2023, Contents.com’s users included Allianz, Billboard, IKEA, Oppo, and Accenture.

Contents.com

Estonia-based Alpha3D utilizes GenAI technologies to allow users to automatically convert text prompts or 2D images of real-world objects into interactive 3D digital assets. The platform aims at simplifying the 3D model creation process, making it more accessible and scalable for users regardless of their 3D-modeling knowledge. Alpha3D's technology has potential applications in various domains, such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), virtual try-on (VTO), gaming, the metaverse, and even non-fungible tokens (NFTs), allowing a wide range of digital interactions and experiences​.The platform claims to automatically generate 3D content 10x faster and up to 100x cheaper than traditional methods, without requiring 3D modeling expertise.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2023, Alpha3D had managed to garner a user base of nearly 100,000 platform users, including Viva Technology, Threedium, Wanna, PwC, and FARFETCH.In June 2023, the company partnered with Tryme, a company specializing in custom software solutions, to advance the creation of AI-generated 3D models for eyewear by combining Alpha3D's rapid 2D-to-3D conversion with TRYME's virtual try-on platform.

Alpha3D

OASIS is a human-centric AI research lab that offers photorealistic AI avatars for remote work. Users can enter text, record audio, or write directly on the screen, and the AI will rewrite based on specified preferences or settings, allowing users to generate rewritten content for various purposes, such as improving clarity, style, or readability. The cross-platform app allows users to use the AI avatar when using a camera, including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, and WhatsApp.

OASIS

Canada-based Maket specializes in utilizing GenAI to automate the design of residential floor plans, aiding architects, designers, and developers in efficiently creating various design iterations​. Additionally, Maket offers a suite of tools, including a virtual assistant for informed desig-making, assistance with navigating zoning codes, and regulatory compliance checks. The platform is also integrated with Rhino, Autodesk Autocad, and Autodesk Revit.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;In April 2022, Maket formed a strategic partnership with <a href="https://mila.quebec/en/mila-and-maket-announce-a-new-partnership-to-leverage-ai-for-generative-architecture/#:~:text=MONTREAL%20%E2%80%93%20April%2020%2C%202022,architecture%2C%20engineering%20and%20construction">Mila</a>, a deep-learning research institute, to advance AI-powered architectural planning​.Key competitors: None comparable (Maket is the only design startup we have identified that uses GenAI to automate the design of residential floor plans.)

Maket

Companies that offer solutions to generate text from a prompt, where output is independent of previous interactions, such as specialized content creation tools

Companies that offer solutions to create and edit images and GIFs, including techniques such as inpainting, outpainting, upscaling, and stylizing

Companies that generate or synthesize voice and audio, including voice cloning, text-to-speech, and language translation

Companies that specialize in generating 3D content, including the creation of game assets (virtual worlds, non-playable characters), product visualization, and other 3D models

Companies that offer solutions to create and edit video content, including scene generation, background replacement, stylizing, and frame interpolation

Companies that offer solutions to generate contextually relevant text responses across multiple conversational exchanges, such as natural language chatbots

Generative AI applications are built on foundation models that are trained using advanced ML models

The technology allows the creation of digital avatars and virtual games

All companies within the space offer a product or service based on generative AI

The technology allows the creation of personalized content

Some applications leverage NLP to train models to process and respond to language-based prompts

Generative AI applications are built on in-house or third-party foundation models

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 
 Moonshot AI, a Chinese AI organization, has unveiled an improved version of its conversational agent, Kimi Chat, named Kimi Chat Explore. The upgraded version is believed to possess enhanced problem-solving skills, comparable to OpenAI's o1 LLM. 
 It is said that Kimi Chat Explore can "think and reflect" in response to user inquiries. It reportedly can plan and execute tasks that require multiple steps, identify errors, provide solutions, and has a wider online search ability, currently being capable of searching and analyzing over 500 online pages for each query.
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 This update follows the company's successful fundraising efforts, having secured <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/32354"> USD 300 million </a> in August after a <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/26799"> USD 1 billion </a> round reported in February. By enhancing its capabilities and implementing a structured monetization approach, the company would be positioned to attract a larger audience while addressing the complexities of modern AI interactions, particularly in the Chinese market.

Moonshot AI

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