[TechWeb] On May 24, Alibaba Group announced its 2024 fiscal year annual report on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The annual report disclosed Alibaba's dark side of artificial intelligence startups (Moonshot AI)bonuscuanslotInvestment details.
As of the year ended March 31, 2024, Alibaba invested a total of approximately US$800 million (approximately RMB 5.9 billion) to acquire approximately 36% of the equity of Moon's Dark Side, which is a preferred stock investment in Moon's Dark Side.
Moonshot AI was established in April 2023. In October of the same year, Moonshot AI announced a breakthrough in the field of "long text" and launched Kimi Chat, the first smart assistant product that supports inputting 200,000 Chinese characters. Dark Side of the Moon has received multiple rounds of investment six months since its establishment. Previous public information showed that its most recent financing in February this year was over US$1 billion, with Alibaba as its main investor.
In April this year, Interface News reported that Yang Zhilin, founder of Dark Side of the Moon, had cashed in tens of millions of dollars by selling his personal shareholding. A large model company that had just been established a year ago sold shares and cashed out just after receiving US$1 billion in financing. The news shocked the AI and investment circles. In response to this news, Dark Moon responded to a reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily at that time: The above news is not true.
According to Similarweb research, in March 2024, Kimi's smart assistant received 12.18 million monthly visits. In channels such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Station B, you can see a large number of Kimi releases through searches for keywords such as "Kimi Smart Assistant","Kimi AI" and "One-Click Copy".
According to Sina Technology, the current cost of obtaining customers per person for Kimi to place advertisements is about 10 yuan. If the computing power cost generated by users 'Q & A interactions after the new introduction is included, the cost of obtaining customers per user will reach 12-13 yuan. According to the third-party platform, the average daily download volume in the past month is 17805, and Kimi's daily customer acquisition cost needs to be at least 200,000 yuan.
Money and computing power are necessary resources in this AI model game. In order to stay at the table, the dark side of the moon is accelerating its financing intensity. However, the high valuation of the Dark Side of the Moon and the difficulty of withdrawing from the AI track have "persuaded" many institutions to retire.
Just this week, exclusive news from "Dark Waves" revealed that financing on the dark side of the moon is still in progress. The latest round of valuation offers have reached US$3 billion. New entrants include Tencent, Gaorong Venture Capital and other institutions.