BaiChuan Intelligence co-founder and commercialization director Hong Tao has resigned. | Exclusive by Zhiyong.

Written by Wang Fangyu

Edited by Su Jianxun and Yang Xuan

Welcome to follow the AI account "Intelligent Emergence" under 36Kr.

"Intelligent Emergence" has learned from multiple independent sources that Hong Tao, the former co-founder and commercialization director of Baichuan Intelligence, has resigned.

Several people close to Baichuan Intelligence told "Intelligent Emergence" that Hong Tao is no longer responsible for and involved in the daily operation and management of Baichuan, and he has left for some time.

In response to the above information, Baichuan Intelligence replied: "Hong Tao has left the company for personal reasons. At the early stage of the company's establishment, he quickly built a commercialization team, laying the foundation for the company's development. We are very grateful for his efforts and contributions."

Hong Tao is best known as the former Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Sogou. He graduated from Tsinghua University and joined Sogou in 2005. He led Sogou to rank sixth in advertising revenue among Internet companies, playing a key role in Sogou's rapid development.

In late July 2023, Hong Tao joined Baichuan Intelligence to start a business again with Wang Xiaochuan, the former CEO of Sogou, and Ru Liyun, the former COO of Sogou. As a co-founder, Hong Tao was mainly responsible for commercialization.

In October this year, the official account of Baichuan Intelligence announced that it has served thousands of customers, including leading enterprises in various industries such as Beidian Digital Intelligence, Perfect World Games, iQIYI, 360 Group, Shengxue Education, and Aixuetang.

Since the second half of this year, many core members of large model unicorns have chosen to leave to start their own businesses or join new teams. For example, Huang Wenhao, the vice president of algorithms and the person in charge of model pre-training at ZeroOneEverything, joined ByteDance in August this year. Several product managers in charge of overseas business of Moon's Dark Side left to start their own businesses around November.

Behind the frequent departure of core figures, large model startups are currently facing intense competitive pressure. An investor told Intelligent Emergence that Chinese large model enterprises are under internal pressure to achieve a closed loop in commercialization, while externally, the competition is intensifying with the accelerated technological updates led by OpenAI.

"Intelligent Emergence" previously reported that among the six Chinese large model unicorns known as the "AI Six Tigers", two have gradually given up the pre-training model and instead focused on the application layer. And how to achieve commercialization is a common challenge they all face.