Zero Revenue, 10 Billion Valuation: Big Tech AI Executives Turn Founders, Sought After by Investors

Recently, executives leaving large Internet companies have been launching AI startups in quick succession, and these projects are being snapped up by investors.

The AI lab founded by Lin Junyang, the former head of Alibaba's Qianwen large model, has completed its first round of financing, with a post - investment valuation of $2 billion (about 13.5 billion yuan). Kunlunxing Robotics, founded by Ren Geng, a former Alibaba executive, has completed three rounds of financing in less than 90 days, with a cumulative financing of billions of yuan. Yanyu Technology, founded by Chen Mian, a former ByteDance executive, also has a post - investment valuation of over $2 billion.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. In the past two years, core AI talents from these large Internet companies have concentrated their entrepreneurial efforts on fields such as AI Coding/Agent, embodied intelligence, and AI hardware. Even before their businesses and products are launched, they have attracted eager investments from investors.

Meanwhile, in the hardware sector, there is a fierce competition for former executives from the "DJI ecosystem". According to IT Juzi, since 2025, nearly 20 companies founded by former DJI employees have received financing. Near DJI's new headquarters, "Sky City" in Shenzhen, investors are frequently approaching current or newly - departed DJI employees.

This wave is far from over. Tech experts from large Internet companies are still leaving, and the venture - capital boom continues. The next star project valued at tens of billions may already be on the way.

Tech Experts Leaving Large Companies Spark an Entrepreneurial Wave

ByteDance, known as the "super - app factory", stands out in this round of AI entrepreneurial wave. According to Lei Feng Network, Shi Kaiwen, the former vice - president of Feishu's product, recently confirmed his entrepreneurship, targeting edge - side agents. During his tenure at Feishu, Shi Kaiwen was in charge of Feishu's product direction for a long time.

The wave of ByteDance executives starting businesses began in 2023 when ChatGPT triggered a global AI boom, which has been heating up ever since. According to Z Finance statistics, in the recent large - model entrepreneurial wave, at least 30 mid - to high - level ByteDance talents have chosen to start their own businesses. A significant number of them had secured their first - round financing before officially leaving the company, with investors including top - tier institutions like Sequoia China and Hillhouse Capital.

From public information, at least five ByteDance executives have started businesses in the past two months. In May this year, two executives from the Jianying team left one after another. Zhang Qizhi (KiKi), the product manager, announced the start of her entrepreneurial journey, and Zhang Xinyi, the person in charge of "Xiaoyunque", also left the same month. Moreover, most of these ByteDance entrepreneurs come from teams such as Flow (AI product innovation), Seed (basic model research), and mature product lines like Jianying and Feishu.

Notably, the AI4S (Seed - AI for Science) team has also become a focus of recent ByteDance entrepreneurship. This team is a branch of ByteDance's Seed team dedicated to cutting - edge scientific research. It does not directly serve consumer - level products like Doubao, Douyin, and Jianying but focuses on technological breakthroughs in scientific computing.

In May this year, several members of ByteDance's AI4S team, including Gu Quanquan and Lü Dingshun, left the company to start businesses, focusing on fields such as AI - powered drug discovery, protein design, biological basic models, and drug discovery platforms.

It's not just ByteDance. Represented by Lin Junyang, who recently received financing, many former Alibaba executives have also joined the AI entrepreneurial gold rush in the past two years. In June this year, Zhang Kaifu, the former vice - president of Alibaba, left the company to start a business, aiming to build a market - oriented world model. Public information shows that Zhang Kaifu had worked at Alibaba for nearly a decade and was an important operator of Alibaba's e - commerce and AI businesses. He was deeply involved in Taobao's merchant ecosystem and traffic operation and was once known as one of the "Four Great Kings of Taobao" along with Tang Xing, Yang Guang, and Liu Bo.

In October 2025, Zhang Kaifu publicly stated that the AI investment in e - commerce and achieving a break - even point marked that AI technology had begun to bring substantial profit returns to Alibaba's main e - commerce business. In April 2026, during Alibaba's new organizational restructuring, the intelligent search and recommendation product division led by Zhang Kaifu was split up, and the core multimodal R & D team was merged into the newly established ATH division.

From the timeline, on the one hand, when members like Gu Quanquan from ByteDance's AI4S team and Alibaba's vice - president Zhang Kaifu left to start businesses, the organizational structures they were in also changed.

At the end of May this year, there were rumors in the market that the AI4S team was planning a new round of organizational adjustment. According to 36Kr, in June, ByteDance's AI - powered drug discovery business started to split for financing, and AI4S entered the industrialization stage. This is also ByteDance's first attempt at industrializing AI4S, and the company attaches great importance to it.

On the other hand, the frequent emergence of star projects with soaring valuations and outstanding market performance in their respective sectors is an important external driving force for these executives from large Internet companies and DJI - ecosystem entrepreneurs to leave and start their own businesses.

In the hardware sector, cafes around DJI's headquarters, "Sky City", have become areas where investors have been frequently seen in the past year. One important background is that a group of DJI - ecosystem entrepreneurs came into the public eye in 2025. For example, Tuozhu Technology, founded by Tao Ye, a former DJI product manager, and ECOFLOW, founded by Wang Lei, a former head of DJI's battery R & D department. The former is valued at up to 40 billion yuan, and the latter has been preparing for an IPO on the US stock market in the past two years. The emergence of these hardware star companies is attracting more and more DJI - ecosystem executives to join the entrepreneurial army.

Entrepreneurial Projects Continue from Their Experiences in Large Companies

The AI entrepreneurial projects of executives from large Internet companies are emerging, and Lin Junyang has attracted the most attention. Three months after leaving Alibaba, Qichacha shows that Lin Junyang has recently registered three companies, including Pragmatic (Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd., in which he holds 100% of the shares, Shanghai Bulage Technology Co., Ltd., in which he holds 99% of the shares, and Shanghai Gewuzhiyong Management Consulting Partnership, which is controlled by Bulage Technology.

Image source: Screenshot from an online data platform.

In addition, according to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, Zhang Kaifu, another former Alibaba executive, is aiming to build a market - oriented AI digital economist and a real - time economic intelligence engine for overseas agents, providing callable context in the business and finance fields for AI.

Zhang Kaifu once posted on social media that predicting human collective behavior, especially market behavior, is one of the ultimate super - power challenges that artificial intelligence has yet to conquer. He believes it is the right time to start and is recruiting relevant talents.

Besides the companies that quickly registered and formed teams after their founders left this year, there is also a group of ByteDance entrepreneurs who started their businesses before 2025, during the global AI boom triggered by ChatGPT. Their projects are now coming into the public eye. For example, Yang Ping, the former head of ByteDance's technology R & D, co - founded Ciyuan Wuxian in July 2025 with Wang Wei, an alumnus from Tsinghua University's Yao Class, and Li Ying, an expert in AI industrial implementation, providing AI Coding Agent services for B - end enterprises.

A common feature of team - building in this entrepreneurial wave is that most of the core members are former employees of their "old companies" and alumni from top universities like Tsinghua and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The combination of "tech experts + top alumni + industry experts" has almost become the standard configuration.

Caption: The official website of Liangkun Technology.

Lü Dingshun, a former member of ByteDance's AI4S team, founded Liangkun Technology in January this year and announced the completion of hundreds of millions of yuan in angel and angel + rounds of financing in June. From its official website, Liangkun Technology currently has nearly 40 members, with core members from universities like Tsinghua and Peking University and international research institutions, focusing on industrial scenarios such as semiconductors, new energy, and innovative drugs.

On June 10th, according to Z Finance, Xiyuan (a pen name), the former AI product manager of ByteDance's Flow department, left the company to start a business focusing on the AI content/social field.

Whether they are from Alibaba or ByteDance, these entrepreneurs from large Internet companies choose directions closely related to their previous experiences. ByteDance entrepreneurs' projects are almost extensions and deepening of their work at ByteDance. For example, those working on AI creation tools are from the Jianying team, and those doing Coding Agent are the incubators of AI programming products. They apply proven methodologies and skills to more vertical sectors for entrepreneurship.

A notable feature of former Alibaba executives' entrepreneurship is that they enter the market from the industries they are most familiar with and use AI to reconstruct specific scenarios. For example, Peng Chao, the former president of Tmall Genie, founded Yunjue Technology. Its first product, a sports wearable device + agent intelligent body, is a natural extension of his industrial judgment accumulated in the consumer hardware field over the years.

The reason why DJI - ecosystem entrepreneurs attract so much attention is largely due to DJI's full - stack capabilities in "technology + product + supply chain + going global" accumulated over the years. Looking at the progress of these DJI - ecosystem entrepreneurs, on the one hand, they transfer DJI's core technologies in the drone field (such as motors, control algorithms, and sensors) to seemingly unrelated fields, using "technological gaps" to reshape traditional products. For example, they use drone motor technology to produce world - leading high - speed hair dryers and visual perception technology to create intelligent electric wheelchairs. Tuozhu Technology, which is very popular in the venture - capital circle, also transfers brushless motors, lidar, and precision control technologies from drones to 3D printers.

On the other hand, they tend to enter relatively niche or underserved markets, such as portable energy storage, outdoor intelligent vehicles (such as electric ATVs), fretless guitars, fishing boats, and 4K imaging glasses, and turn niche markets into mass - consumption markets through technological innovation.

Investment Moves Forward: "As Long as You're Willing to Start, We'll Provide Money, Projects, and Help Build Teams"

Investors' "hunt" for startups founded by executives from large companies is not new. However, catalyzed by the AI wave, this competition has become unprecedentedly fierce, with records being constantly broken in terms of financing speed and single - deal amounts.

Many star projects have received investments from top - tier institutions like Sequoia China, IDG Capital, Hillhouse Capital, and Tencent at the early stage, with valuations often reaching hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

This "starting at the peak" situation is directly related to investors' strategy of "securing positions". An investor told Tech Planet that the phenomenon of investors "organizing groups" is prevalent. Several leading funds jointly enter at the early stage, lock in two rounds of shares, and then open them to the market.

In the hard - tech sector, the logic of "investing in people" has been taken to the extreme. Taking the "DJI ecosystem", which is highly favored by capital, as an example, according to Daily People, many investors specifically target mid - to high - level executives from companies like DJI, Tuozhu, Insta360, Yunjing, and Anker. There is even a joke in the Shenzhen investment circle that executives only need to say "I'm starting a business, give me money" to easily raise tens of millions of dollars.

The financing amounts are also reaching new highs. For example, Lin Junyang, as the "number - one person" in the core business, has a company valued at $2 billion even before the team and product are fully established, which is almost unprecedented among domestic AI startups. The same investment speed can be seen in the Kunlunxing Robotics project founded by a former Alibaba executive, which received billions of yuan in financing in less than 90 days. This kind of speed has now become the norm in the industry.

As the valuations of entrepreneurial projects rise, investors' return - rate models are being re - evaluated. Headhunter Allen told Tech Planet that science and technology projects are becoming more and more expensive. In the past, the first - round financing of consumer and Internet projects was mostly in the millions, but now, projects in the embodied intelligence and AI sectors start at tens of millions, and there have been many cases of first - round financing exceeding 100 million recently. When projects enter the B and C rounds, it is difficult to get shares of high - quality targets, and the company valuations further increase, narrowing the investment return space.

According to Allen, most VCs (venture - capital firms) are now reaching out to "under the surface", contacting founders as soon as they have the idea of starting a business to lock in shares. The core logic of early - stage investment is still "investing in people". Currently, entrepreneurs with backgrounds from ByteDance and DJI are the most favored. Investors often invite current employees from these two companies for coffee and hand out business cards. Among ByteDance employees, mid - to high - level executives at levels L5 to L7 are the focus of investors, especially those from business lines like Doubao, Jianying, and Feishu, as their capabilities are highly compatible with AI applications and are in high demand.

In addition, more and more venture - capital institutions are moving their investment stages forward, and "incubation - style investment" has become a new trend. Some institutions even promise current employees of large Internet companies: "As long as you're willing to start, we'll provide money, projects, and help you build a team."

According to Allen, in the eyes of investors, there are two types of entrepreneurs worth betting on now: one is the practical type who has experienced product creation from scratch in large companies, gone through the management systems of large companies, and been exposed to the most cutting - edge technologies; the other is the genius type who graduated from Tsinghua or Peking University and has a top - notch academic background. The former excels in experience and vision, while the latter wins in underlying innovation ability.

In July, the departure of executives from large Internet companies continues. According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily and Sina Technology, Lin Xi, the product manager of Doubao's mobile hardware, and Jiang Yuning (pen name: Meng Zhu), a senior algorithm expert (P10) in Alibaba's China e - commerce business group and the person in charge of Taobao's recommendation algorithm, have recently left the company. Their next moves will continue to be closely watched by the industry.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Tech Planet" (ID: tech618), written by Lin Jing and published by 36Kr with authorization.