Alibaba has introduced its own large language model (LLM) focused on enterprise customers, unlike consumer-focused models like OpenAI's ChatGPT. The company's Qwen models have been deployed by over 90,000 enterprise customers since May. This move is part of a trend in China where tech giants such as Tencent, Baidu, JD.com, Huawei and ByteDance are developing their own LLMs. Experts believe this shift could democratize AI capabilities, allowing smaller startups to compete with massive tech companies and enabling traditional businesses to adopt state-of-the-art technology.
https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2024/alibaba-plans-major-discounts-on-ai-large-language-models/Alibaba Cloud has reduced the price of its visual reasoning artificial intelligence model, Qwen-vl-max, by up to 85% as a price war rages on in China's domestic AI services market. The move is Alibaba's third AI price cut this year and comes after ByteDance, parent company of TikTok, launched a similar visual model in mid-December. With the new pricing, Qwen-vl-max will now cost 0.003 yuan (US$0.00041) per thousand input token uses, positioning it as a direct competitor to ByteDance's model.
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3292916/alibaba-cuts-ai-visual-model-cost-85-last-day-year-price-war-rages?module=top_story&pgtype=sectionA Shanghai-backed investment firm, Fortera Capital, has led a funding round for AI start-up Stepfun, raising hundreds of millions of dollars. The funding was also supported by Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings and Qiming Venture Partners, an early investor in several prominent Chinese companies including ByteDance and Xiaomi. Stepfun, founded in April last year, plans to use the funds to develop advanced AI models with multimodal capabilities and complex reasoning, as well as expand its consumer-oriented product portfolio. This investment reflects Shanghai's efforts to support technological innovation in key industries, led by the municipal government.
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3292348/shanghai-backed-firm-helps-ai-start-stepfun-raise-hundreds-millions-dollars?module=top_story&pgtype=section