Tencent has invested $20 million in the new AI lab founded by Lin Junyang, the former lead of Alibaba's Qwen large language models, according to The Information.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the outlet reports that Lin's first fundraising round raised several hundred million dollars in total, valuing the lab at around $2 billion post-money. Sequoia Capital China and Gaorong Ventures led the round, with each investing $100 million.
Lin is already looking to raise his next round, the report adds. Tencent has also backed other Chinese large-model developers, including Moonshot AI, MiniMax, and Zhipu.