https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/05/valued-at-1b-kai-fu-lees-llm-startup-unveils-open-source-model/

Kai-Fu Lee, the computer scientist known in the West for his bestseller AI Superpowers and in China for his bets on artificial intelligence unicorns, has a new venture — and a great ambition.

In late March, Lee launched a company called 01.AI with the vision to develop a homegrown large language model for the Chinese market. The venture puts him in competition with other prominent Chinese tech leaders, including Sogou’s founder Wang Xiaochuan, who have been swiftly gathering talent and venture capital to establish China’s equivalents of OpenAI.