Just now, Ant Group invested in a former ByteDance employee.

Investment community sources have learned that AI application company LiblibAI has announced the completion of a $130 million (over RMB 900 million) Series B financing round. The round was jointly led by Sequoia China, CMC Capital, and a strategic investor. Existing shareholders Shunwei Capital, Source Code Capital, Mingshi Venture Capital, and Yingce Capital all increased their stakes significantly. Multiple sources familiar with the matter also revealed that the strategic investor in this round is Ant Group, and institutions including Lenovo Venture Capital also participated in the investment.

Behind LiblibAI is a team of post - 90s individuals, most of whom come from ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba, Microsoft, etc. The company's founder is a former ByteDance employee.

This is just a microcosm. When looking at the domestic AI startup wave, it's not hard to find that top talents from large tech companies have become the most sought - after startup groups.

A Post - 90s Entrepreneur Leaves ByteDance

When investors think of LiblibAI, a post - 90s individual comes to mind.

Chen Mian, born in 1992, graduated from Southeast University. In his previous career, he worked at Mobike, Didi, and Meituan Fresh. Later, he joined ByteDance and became the global commercialization head of CapCut. At the age of 28, he reached the 4 - 1 position level, becoming the youngest product manager at the 4 - 1 level in ByteDance's history at that time.

In 2023, with the wave of large models sweeping across, Chen Mian decided to leave ByteDance and embark on an entrepreneurial journey.

Regarding his experience at ByteDance, he believes that the key is to learn thinking patterns, competition strategies, and strategic judgment from the past, rather than blindly applying past experiences. This approach is useless in the AI era.

In May 2023, LibLibAI was officially established. In the view of the LiblibAI team, at the beginning of a new technological revolution, changes in the tool segment are the fastest. On the one hand, new technologies can significantly improve efficiency in complex scenarios. Therefore, changes often occur first in the content creation production segment, especially in the professional production segment. For example, in the PC era, the well - known software that emerged earliest were Office and Adobe.

On the other hand, To C products have a low tolerance for AI hallucinations and technical flaws. Ordinary C - end users are only willing to use new technologies when they are mature enough. Therefore, the popularization cycle of mass To C entertainment products is often longer.

Based on the above judgment, LiblibAI set a core strategy at its inception to enter the professional market and production segment first, providing creative materials and tools for designers and content creators.

Today, LiblibAI has grown into a multi - modal model and creative community. The platform integrates multi - modal capabilities such as image, video, 3D, and LoRA training, covering the entire AI workflow from inspiration generation, visual design to dynamic video production. It has incubated over 20 million AI creators in professional visual scenarios such as illustration, photography, e - commerce, posters, and IP.

During this period, investors came knocking. In July last year, LibLibAI announced that it had completed three rounds of financing within a year, with a total amount of hundreds of millions of RMB. The angel round was invested by Source Code Capital, Gao Rong Venture Capital, and Jinshajiang Venture Capital. The second round was led by a strategic investor, and the third round was led by Mingshi Venture Capital. Existing shareholders continued to support the company in multiple rounds.

In February this year, LibLibAI received hundreds of millions of RMB in funding again. The round was led by Yingce Capital and Shunwei Capital, with existing shareholders such as Mingshi Venture Capital increasing their investments significantly. Giant Network served as the industrial investor in this round.

Thus, another post - 90s figure has emerged in the venture capital circle.

Scrambling for ByteDance - affiliated Entrepreneurs

Looking around, Chen Mian's former ByteDance colleagues are queuing up to announce their financing rounds.

Almost at the same time, embodied intelligence company Xingji Guangnian announced the completion of its Pre - A round of financing, led by Saina Capital and Puhua Capital, with Kexi Venture Capital participating. In May, it announced the consecutive completion of tens of millions of RMB in angel and angel + rounds of financing. The angel round was led by Fengrui Capital, with Jiacheng Capital participating, and the angel + round was led by Yunshi Capital, with the Tsinghua Alumni Seed Fund participating. The founder, Wei Dehao, graduated from Tsinghua University and was a robot learning algorithm engineer at ByteDance AI Lab.

Also recently, AI video company Aishi Technology announced the completion of a RMB 100 million Series B+ financing round, jointly invested by Fosun RZ Capital, Tongchuang Weiye, and Shunxi Fund. Just one month before this, Aishi Technology had just received a Series B financing round with a total amount of over $60 million. The round was led by Alibaba, with Fortune Capital, Shenzhen Capital Group, Beijing AI Fund, Hunan Electric Power Media, Giant Network, and Antler participating.

The founder, Wang Changhu, is a veteran at ByteDance. He joined ByteDance in early 2017, served as the technical director of the artificial intelligence laboratory, and later became the head of ByteDance's visual technology, leading the construction of ByteDance's visual large model from scratch.

The investment team at Fortune Capital also recognized this: "Founder Wang Changhu and his team have accumulated experience in data processing, content production, and accurate understanding of video content in the process of building video AI capabilities for Douyin. This has given Aishi Technology a competitive advantage in data, algorithms, and engineering."

Similarly, PureblueAI Qinglan also officially completed its first round of financing, jointly led by BlueFocus and Inno Angel Fund, with the Tsinghua Alumni Seed Fund participating. The founder and CEO, Lu Yang, graduated from the Chinese Department of Tsinghua University. He was the former market general manager of ByteDance's Volcengine and the market head of the Doubao large model, experiencing the entire process from the R & D to the market promotion of AI large models.

Earlier in July, Jiasu Jinhua announced that it had received over RMB 100 million in a Series A+ financing round, led by the Beijing Robot Industry Development Investment Fund managed by Shoucheng Holdings, with the Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Fund and Bohua Capital participating. The company also completed its Series A financing round just one month before. The round was led by Shenzhen Capital Group, with Jinding Capital participating, and existing shareholders Source Code Capital, Inno Angel Fund, Minyin International, and Bianshi Times continued to increase their investments.

This humanoid robot company, founded in 2023, has a founder, Cheng Hao, who graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor's and master's degree. After working at Amazon for one year, he started his own business. His startup project was acquired by ByteDance in 2017, and he joined ByteDance as the vice - president of the Feishu product.

It is found that most of these entrepreneurs from ByteDance previously held important positions in ByteDance's commercialization or technology departments, accumulating a large amount of resources and experience. They are almost ideal investment targets for VCs. After leaving ByteDance, they have all appeared in the AI arena.

Diverse Landscape: The Rise of Chinese AI Factions

This situation is not accidental.

In the past two years, executives from many large Internet companies such as Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, Baidu, JD.com, and Meituan have left their positions and quickly formed a major force in AI startups. Many of them have successfully received financing.

For investors, choosing entrepreneurs with the aura of large companies means they don't have to take greater risks by betting on inexperienced newcomers. "This was the most preferred entrepreneur profile of US dollar funds in the past, and the logic still holds today," a non - named investor once summarized.

For example, Tashizhihang, which has completed consecutive financing rounds this year, has a star - studded core team. Chairman Li Zhenyu was the former president of Baidu's Intelligent Driving Business Group. CEO Dr. Chen Yilun was the former CTO of Huawei's autonomous driving and the chief engineer of DJI's machine vision. Chief Scientist Dr. Ding Wenchao was a former "Genius Youth" at Huawei. Chief Architect Chen Tongqing also comes from Huawei and was the former head of the ADS intelligent navigation department.

It is obvious that most of these AI entrepreneurs are from prestigious universities. For example, from Tsinghua University, besides the well - known Wang Huiwen and Wang Xiaochuan, there are also Peng Jun from Pony.ai, Cao Xudong from Momenta, Wang He from Galaxy Universal, Wang Yu from Wuwen Xinqiong, Zeng Guoyang from Mianbi Intelligence... The list goes on and on.

As the saying goes, "Tsinghua in the north, Jiaotong in the south." The Shanghai Jiao Tong University alumni have always been a prominent force in the AI arena. In addition, the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei has also produced a powerful AI legion. Since this year, the Zhejiang University faction, represented by Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, has emerged suddenly, with a spectacular startup team behind it.

Previously, Stanford University released the "Global Artificial Intelligence Power Ranking", comprehensively evaluating and ranking the AI activity of 36 countries through 42 indicators. China ranked second. When investors talked about this, they concluded that the high - end technology industry is entering the "Chinese time". The reason behind this is that China has two superior conditions that other countries can't match: a complete and comprehensive industrial category, industrial infrastructure, and a large engineer dividend.

This view coincides with that of Mi Lei, the founding partner of Zhongke Chuangxing. In his opinion, the root of a country's strength lies in innovation - driven development. China is moving in this direction. "Although the demographic dividend is gone, there is still at least a 20 - 30 - year engineer dividend. Chinese companies like Huawei, BYD, CATL, and DJI, which are currently developing well, have all benefited from China's large engineer dividend. This is our opportunity."

Chen Weiguang, the managing partner of BlueRun Ventures, also believes that as the demographic dividend fades, China has more high - end talents. The advanced manufacturing and other frontier technology industries are enjoying the "engineer dividend" like never before. "We can see that more and more smart and hard - working Chinese entrepreneurs are joining the ranks of technology startups."

As the wheels of history roll forward, Chinese technology entrepreneurs are stepping onto the world - class stage in the technological tide.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Investment Community" (ID: pedaily2012), author: Liu Bo, published by 36Kr with authorization.