Change in Zhipu's management: The former Vice President of Midjourney Asia joins, while the Chief Strategy Officer leaves | Exclusive from 36Kr

Text｜Zhou Xinyu

Editor｜Su Jianxun

"Intelligent Emergence" exclusively learned that recently, in Zhipu, one of the "Six Tigers" of China's AI large models, the following management changes have occurred:

• Former Midjourney Asia Vice President Wang Yueting joined Zhipu, mainly responsible for multimodal products and the market;
• Zhipu's Chief Strategy Officer Zhang Kuo and Vice President Qu Teng have recently resigned.

Regarding the above information, as of before the publication, Zhipu has not replied yet.

Wang Yueting, who newly serves as the person in charge of Zhipu's multimodal products and the market, previously served as the Asia Vice President of the AIGC star company Midjourney with a valuation of over 1 billion US dollars, responsible for the operation of Midjourney in the Chinese region.

△Wang Yueting. Image source: Internet

"Zhipu's strength is technology, while its weakness is products relatively." A relevant person told "Intelligent Emergence". Previously, Zhipu began to gradually introduce talents related to products. For example, "Intelligent Emergence" once exclusively reported that Hu Yunhua, an veteran from Microsoft and Alibaba, joined and served as the person in charge of Zhipu's C-end product "Zhipu Qingyan".

2025 is the year of a major test for the user retention and commercialization of AI products, which has become an undisputed consensus in the AI industry. Some companies choose to focus on their businesses, concentrating resources on star products, such as shrinking overseas businesses and focusing on the dark side of the moon of Kimi. Other companies are also actively testing different application directions, such as splitting the business of ZeroOneEverything.

Currently, in the field of conversational tools, the monthly active users and user volume of "Zhipu Qingyan" are not dominant compared to products such as Doubao and Kimi, and there is a long-term gap of an order of magnitude in monthly active users.

Since October 2024, Zhipu has begun to focus on the intelligent agent AI Agent, attempting to create differentiation in products. It has successively launched the browser assistant AutoGLM, AutoGLM for the App/Web end and GLM-PC 1.0 for the PC end, as well as GLM-PC 1.1 with a "deep thinking" mode.

Relevant people revealed that represented by Wang Yueting, Zhipu is planning to introduce a group of young middle and senior management to form the backbone of products and commercialization, with the goal of creating products with top user activity and market recognition.

It is understood that the two senior executives who resigned recently, Zhang Kuo and Qu Teng, were responsible for financing-related affairs in Zhipu.

As an early member of Zhipu, Zhang Kuo obtained a bachelor's degree in computer science and technology and a doctorate in engineering from Tsinghua University. After graduation, he served as the chief scientist of the Sogou Business Division and the general manager of the General Search Department. He also once started a business to create a traditional Chinese medicine search engine "Xiaolu Medical Hall".

△Zhang Kuo. Image source: Internet

Qu Teng, who joined Zhipu in August 2023, has more profound experience in the primary market. Since 2015, he has successively served as the senior manager of the Investment Banking Department of Zhongde Securities and the senior business vice president of Huaxing Securities, responsible for investment banking-related businesses.

△Qu Teng. Image source: Internet

Insiders revealed that since 2024, Zhipu has begun to split business modules for financing, and Zhang Kuo and Qu Teng are respectively responsible for the financing of specific business modules. The above-mentioned person told "Intelligent Emergence" that the departure of Zhang Kuo and Qu Teng will not affect the overall financing situation of Zhipu.

In December 2024, "Intelligent Emergence" once exclusively reported the news that Zhipu completed a new round of 3 billion yuan financing, and the new investors include multiple strategic investors and state-owned capital.

And with the further increase in valuation, whether it is to raise funds overseas or attract more strategic investors and state-owned capital, the "Six Tigers (Zhipu, Baichuan Intelligence, MiniMax, the Dark Side of the Moon, Step Star, ZeroOneEverything)" need to have stronger bargaining power and talent reserves in financing.

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