By Greg Gao

(JW Insights) Jun 26 -- Shengshu-AI(生数科技) , a Beijing-based generative AI startup, has reportedly raised almost RMB100 million ($14 million) in an angel round led by Ant Group, valuing the Chinese large language model firm at $100 million, reported Yicai Global on June 21.

Baidu Venture and Z&Y Capital also took part in the funding round, The Paper reported on June 20.

Shengshu-AI will mainly use the proceeds to build core research and development teams and accelerate the R&D of multimodal LLMs and application products, it added. A multimodal LLM combines multimodal information for training, including text, images, video, and audio.

“The long-term goal of artificial intelligence is to build multimodal neural networks, that is, AI can learn concepts from different modalities to better understand the world,” Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has said.

Shengshu-AI was established in March 2023 by the AI company RealAI of Tsinghua University, Ant Group, and BV Baidu Ventures. Tang Jiayu, former Vice President of RealAI, serves as CEO.

Currently, Shengshu-AI is actively building the world's leading controllable multimodal universal large model, and is committed to improving the creativity and productivity of all mankind through generative AI technology, according to media reports.

(Yuan XY)