Dr Kai-Fu Lee, president and CEO of China’s leading venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures, announced on Sunday via a WeChat post that he is building a startup called Project AI 2.0 himself, in a bid to rival the immensely popular ChatGPT.
Project AI 2.0 will be the seventh firm incubated by Sinovation Ventures’s internal AI institute called “Ta Jian,” or spire.
It seeks to construct an AI 2.0 platform and so-called “AI-first” productivity applications to prioritize the use of AI.
According to Lee, who was behind a number of stellar startups and now established firms, opportunities 10 times larger than mobile internet will arise in what he called “AI 2.0 era.”
In this era, existing software, user interface and applications will receive a facelift and in their stead emerge a new batch of “AI-first” applications and an AI-driven business model.
“Project AI 2.0’s goal is not just to become the Chinese version of ChatGPT,” Lee posted in his WeChat Moments, adding that AI 2.0 is not just a highly versatile conversational AI chatbot, or an AIGC tool.
Even Co-pilot and related current applications are just the beginning of AI 2.0 capabilities, he added.
With funds and talent now in place, Lee has set his hands to building an entrepreneurial team. Project AI 2.0 now looks to hire talent focused on big model, natural language processing (NLP), multimodality, algorithms and distributed infrastructure, and also to complete its first round of funding.
Sinovation Ventures disclosed that multiple tech professionals with experience leading big teams at global internet giants had confirmed their willingness to join.
For the time being, Lee will head the team himself and remain in the role as an interim leader, until a CEO is chosen to take over, said Sinovation Ventures.
