The start-up in October launched smart chatbot Kimi Chat, built on its self-developed Moonshot large language model (LLM), which can process as many as 200,000 Chinese characters in a context window – referring to the swathe of text that an AI model can process during conversation with users.
Alibaba, HongShan and Moonshot AI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
China had the most number of generative AI start-ups that received funding at the time, according to a report by AI-focused research firm Zhidongxi. The mainland accounted for 22 of the 51 such start-ups around the world that raised about US$13.8 billion in investments during the period.
China has the most generative AI start-ups to receive funding in first half: report
China has the most generative AI start-ups to receive funding in first half: report
Moonshot AI was founded in April 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a computer science graduate from Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University. He later received his doctoral degree in the US from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In an industry event last November, Yang said that the ability to process long texts is critical to the future development of existing AI models.
An LLM’s capability partly hinges on its number of parameters, a measure of the sophistication of an AI model. While ChatGPT was trained on 175 billion parameters, the Moonshot LLM has more than 100 billion parameters, according to local media reports.
Chinese AI start-up claims to beat US rivals in processing long text
Chinese AI start-up claims to beat US rivals in processing long text
Mainland China had 254 LLMs as of November, according to a white paper published by the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.
Meanwhile, Moonshot AI might somehow have to contend with another start-up named Moonshot AI that is based in New York City. This US firm, according to its website, provides an AI platform that helps e-commerce stores fully automate their online operations to increase conversions, sales and revenue.
