2.1 billion yuan bet on the world model, with the national team, financial capital, and industrial capital taking action at the same time

Intelligent Things Author | Bi Weihao Editor | Mo Ying At present, the large language model track has gradually entered a new stage of convergence in capabilities and price competition after experiencing a massive "intertwining" of underlying models. Capital has also withdrawn from this gradually stabilizing market and begun to look for the next AI track that still has structural barriers. From large language models to multi-modal large models, to world models that can understand and deduce the real world, this exploration path to the next generation of artificial intelligence is becoming a new direction of capital attention. HiDream.ai reported on July 24 that recently, HiDream.ai, a multi-modal large-scale model company, announced the completion of a C1 round of financing of RMB 1.5 billion. The social security fund Sichuan Zhenxing Science and Technology Innovation Fund, ICBC Capital, Hongyi Asset Management, and Dunhong Capital jointly led the investment. Eleven institutions including Xiamen International Trade Capital, Shanghai Film New Vision Fund, and Huace Film and Television followed the investment. Old shareholders Hefei Industrial Investment and Oriental Fuhai continued to invest. The company has completed multiple rounds of financing in the past three months, with a cumulative financing amount of more than 2.1 billion yuan, and a post-investment valuation of more than 1 billion U.S. dollars. It has officially joined the ranks of global AI unicorns only three years after its establishment. Mei Tao, founder and CEO of Zhixiang Future, said that this round of funds will be used to continue to promote the base construction of the native all-modal world model. He believes: "From multi-modal to building a native all-modal world model, it is the only way to AGI." Regarding whether the world model can lead to AGI, the industry is still continuing to explore, but some capital has used real money to answer another question: after AI competition enters the next stage, what kind of companies are worthy of long-term bets. 1. After the large language model matures, multimodality is becoming a new betting target for capital. Capital will not bet on a technology because it is "more advanced", but because it sees a "new growth curve." From the perspective of commercialization, large language models are still in a period of rapid growth. Anthropic’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew from US$9 billion to US$49 billion in just 6 months. As a comparison, it took Amazon, a traditional SaaS company, 6 years to grow from 1 billion to 10 billion;