Exclusive: The Kimi arbitration case has not been settled, and Zhang Yutong may be sued separately.

Author | Yu Lili

Editor | Liu Jing

"Dark Surge Waves" exclusively learned that the Kimi arbitration case, which has been on hold for a long time, has not reached a settlement as expected, but has entered the next process of the arbitration case.

According to an insider: The two parties of the kimi arbitration case, the old shareholders of Circular Intelligence and Yang Zhilin, etc., have completed the payment at the HKIAC (Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre) in late January and late February respectively. Currently, the formation of the arbitration tribunal has also been completed. And the more crucial protagonist behind the entire event, Zhang Yutong, may be separately sued.

According to another investor close to the negotiation, after Zhu Xiaohu publicly criticized and Yang Zhilin responded with an open letter, Yang Zhilin once came out to negotiate with the old shareholders, expressing his willingness to transfer some shares, and a small part of them was transferred from Zhang Yutong - implying that Kimi is not willing to cut ties with Zhang Yutong.

But this number is obviously lower than the expectations of the old shareholders of Circular Intelligence. An investor close to both parties told us that the kimi side initially proposed to give 20% of the shares, equivalent to a 10% compensation on the previous basis, but currently, the shares they are willing to transfer "are equivalent to a significant discount".

In a sense, both of these have prompted the old shareholders to decide to persist with the lawsuit. In addition, an insider also said that although Yang Zhilin stated in his open letter on December 6 that he had completed all the necessary procedures to leave Circular Intelligence and start a new business before starting his entrepreneurship, the old shareholders do not think so. And this is the main point of contention in this lawsuit.

As for Zhang Yutong, an investor close to the old shareholders of Circular Intelligence told us that the old shareholders are likely to file a lawsuit against her separately because they believe that she "completely violated the fiduciary duty, and the 9 million initial free shares are completely illegal income, and after Round A, she received another 3 million shares".

In addition, the kimi-related case chose to initiate arbitration at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre because they have a contractual agreement with the entrepreneurs, while Zhang Yutong is not within this scope, so they are more likely to file another lawsuit in the Cayman court.

On November 11, 2024, Kimi founders Yang Zhilin and co-founder and CTO Zhang Yutao were arbitrated by Circular Intelligence and 5 of the 7 investors of Circular Intelligence - Jinshajiang Ventures, Jingya Capital, Boyu Capital, Huashan Capital and Wanwu Capital. The reason is that Yang Zhilin and Zhang Yutao, etc., started financing and founded Dark Side of the Moon before obtaining the consent waiver from the previous investors.

After that, the more crucial figure in the entire event, the former managing partner of Jinshajiang, who is not only the first angel investor of Circular Intelligence but also an important promoter of the Ali financing case of kimi's Dark Side of the Moon, Zhang Yutong, gradually emerged.

In the view of Zhu Xiaohu, the managing partner of venture capital, regarding Yang Zhilin and Zhang Yutao, it is a more manageable part. He clearly told us that if Yang Zhilin and Zhang Yutao are willing to cut ties with Zhang Yutong, they "are willing to waive the two and support young people to pursue the AGI dream", but at the same time, he insists on separating Zhang Yutong because she "violated the fiduciary duty".

On the evening of December 6, Kimi founder Yang Zhilin, through an open letter, stated that before starting his entrepreneurship, he had completed all the necessary procedures to leave Circular Intelligence and start a new business as agreed. At the same time, he confirmed Zhang Yutong's identity as the co-founder of Dark Side of the Moon and the fact that he gave her shares in a way of fulfilling them over many years.

Zhang Yutong, who is in the midst of the public opinion storm, has not responded to this. However, on February 11, Zhang Yutong rarely spoke out on WeChat Moments and social media, saying that she is glad that the user volume of the new version of Kimi has reached a new high.

An AI investor believes that "this is a reaction under the impact of DeepSeek".

During the period when the kimi lawsuit was on hold, the AI industry has already changed. If Kimi's early rival was Doubao, which was in a full-scale battle in the C-end market, then the biggest impact on Kimi at present is the sudden emergence of DeepSeek.

Although the reasoning model and papers recently released by Kimi are actually commendable. In the OpenAI paper, Kimi k1.5 and DeepSeek-R1 are both considered as Chinese models that discovered the mystery of o1. Not long ago, the papers they released, like DeepSeek, are all focused on the algorithm optimization of long texts. But these are still drowned in the huge momentum of DeepSeek.

In the opinion of an AI investor, deepseek is a complete disenchantment of the large model, and its impact on the valuation of large models at home and abroad is far greater than that on NVIDIA. And as the most star company among the "AI Six Tigers", Kimi is also not spared.

In the opinion of some investors, up to now in the progress of the lawsuit, the consideration of interests may not be the biggest option for both sides "One side may think that clarifying the industry rules is more important, and for the other side, the final result presented by the law is ultimately more acceptable than public opinion".

All this also means that the story of the Dark Side of the Moon, which was full of choices of gain and loss from the beginning, is far from over.