杨植麟 · 11

Why is capital chasing AI Native and ignoring the old Internet

Capital doesn't reward being old-fashioned, not because old-fashioned people are at fault. The old part is clearly priced. There is no bad information, so there is no excess profit. Global venture capital was $510 billion in the first half of 2026, surpassing $44 billion for the full year of 2025 in one and a half months. More than 70% have entered AI; OpenAI and Anthropic took 217 billion dollars, accounting for 43%. With that much money, you'd think everyone could share a little bit. The truth is that distribution is more extreme than total volume, and the first sieve doesn't screen the industry, it screens people. The category that has been screened out now has an unkind name: the internet is old. Let's just say one thing: the “old man” in this article has nothing to do with age. It refers to a set of methodologies that have been formed in the mobile internet cycle, have been tested over and over, and have brought huge returns to holders. The person holding it may be 45 years old or 32 years old. It was this methodology that was being repriced, not the year of birth. Confusing these two things is Lao Deng's most common mistake and one of the most comfortable mistakes — because if the problem is someone else's age discrimination, you don't need to change a single word. 01 What is AI Native The term has been misused. They can use ChatGPT not called AI native, nor AI in the company name, let alone in their twenties. There are three things that really separate people. First, the starting point is a model, not a requirement. The order in which Lao Deng makes a product is: look at what the user wants, write down the requirements, and find technology to implement it. The order of AI natives is reversed: first figure out what level the model is capable of today and what step it is likely to reach tomorrow, and then move from this capability boundary to the external product. The former uses the model as a tool, and the latter uses the model as the foundation. There was no difference between these two kinds of things made by humans in the first edition; by the third edition, there was a difference of one species. Article 2. The default unit of an organization is not a person. The division of labor in the Internet age is the division of one thing into ten people. AI Native's division of labor is to take ten things from one person and add a bunch of agents. The CEO of a domestic application company said that the team consists of less than ten people, but a large number of AI work at night, and the first thing employees do every morning is check the work the AI handed in the night before. Cursor's side is even more extreme. Public reports mention that the company doesn't have a product manager; engineers write their own code, talk to users themselves, and participate in recruiting people themselves. Article 3. Information is first-hand. AI Native's input sources are papers, model cards, GitHub issues, original discussions on X, and self-run evals. Lao Deng's input sources are industry summits, closed-door meetings, brokerage reports, interpretation of public accounts, and finding someone to drink coffee with. This one is the least obscure and most lethal; I'll talk about that separately later. I'm satisfied with all three. The 25-year-old is an AI native, and so is the 45-year-old. I'm not satisfied with the three rules; I'm still an old man at the age of 25. AI natives are a state, not an age group. The trouble is that tickets in this state are works, not resumes. 02 The two lists spread the results of this round on the table. These are two lists. The first one is an all-AI native company. Their valuations are not rising; they are exchanging orders of magnitude. List 1 · Upstream OpenAI raised $122 billion in a single round of financing in Q1 2026, followed by $852 billion, the largest private equity financing in history. Anthropic Q2 had a single round of $65 billion, after investing $965 billion, accounting for about half of the total global venture capital for the quarter; the revenue operating rate in May reached about $47 billion. DeepSeek raised about 70 billion yuan in its first round of financing in May 2026. In April of the same year, Liang Wenfeng raised his direct shareholding from 1% to 34%, and controlled a total of about 84.29% of the shares through related entities. The Dark Side of the Moon (Kimi) was estimated at $4.3 billion in December 2025; it went for three consecutive rounds from January to February 2026 to reach 18 billion; the D round in May was about $2 billion, breaking 20 billion dollars after the investment; the July round surpassed $3.5 billion, after investing 35 billion dollars; the pre-IPO target was 50 billion dollars. ARR broke 100 million in March, 200 million in May, and held steady at 300 million US dollars in June, with APIs accounting for more than 70%. Smart Spectrum · MiniMax successively landed in Hong Kong stocks in early 2026, with a market capitalization exceeding 100 billion yuan. It was one of the first major model companies listed in China. The second one...

3d agoWendy#AI #DeepSeek

The three-year valuation rose from 300 million to 35 billion. How did Kimi do that?

Author: Mochi Beating Original title: Kimi completed more than 3.5 billion US dollars in financing, and the valuation rose to 35 billion US dollars. The pre-IPO round has already started early, Kimi has just opened up K3's model weight, and a new round of financing for Dark Side of the Moon has also been settled. According to an exclusive report from the “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” reporter, Dark Side of the Moon has completed Series F financing. The financing amount exceeds 3.5 billion US dollars, and the post-investment valuation has reached 35 billion US dollars. There were no plans to raise this much money in this round of financing. The report said that Dark Side of the Moon closed the F round early because the investors' subscription amount exceeded the original target by more than three times. Series G financing, which was originally scheduled to start in August of this year, also began early. Round G will be the pre-IPO round before Dark Side of the Moon goes public, and the pre-investment valuation has already risen to $50 billion. A week ago, the version that came out on the market is that Dark Side of the Moon will launch the final round of private equity financing in August after completing a pre-investment round of financing valued at approximately US$31.5 billion. Today, the final round of round F funding is over $3.5 billion, and the post-investment valuation has reached $35 billion, and the next round won't wait until August. Both the money and the valuation came faster than originally planned. Since its establishment in 2023, Dark Side of the Moon has only taken more than three years to push its valuation from $300 million to $35 billion. The ongoing pre-IPO round has put the next price tag at 50 billion US dollars. With more than ten rounds of financing over three years, the valuation rose from 300 million US dollars to 35 billion US dollars. The dark side was founded in April 2023. It was co-founded by Yang Zhilin, Zhang Yutao, Zhou Xinyu, and Wu Yuxin. The company completed an angel round of financing of more than $200 million about two months after its establishment, and the post-investment valuation was approximately $300 million. For a big model startup that hasn't officially launched a product, this is already a rare early-stage financing. What really brought the dark side of the moon to the center of the capital table was the A+ round of financing completed in February 2024. The scale of this round of financing exceeded 1 billion US dollars. Alibaba led the investment, with the participation of institutions and industrial capital such as Sequoia China, Xiaohongshu, Meituan, etc., and the valuation of Dark Side of the Moon was pushed to about 2.5 billion US dollars. Half a year later, the Series B round surpassed $300 million, and the company's valuation continued to rise to $3.3 billion. However, after the 2024 round of financing, the Dark Side of the Moon's financing pace slowed down for a while. Over the year, China's big model market has changed markedly. Major companies such as Byte and Ali continue to lower model prices. DeepSeek is rapidly rising with open source and cost efficiency, and competition for general chat products is also gradually shifting from user growth to model capabilities, reasoning costs, and commercial revenue. Kimi used to take the lead with long texts, but with just one product label, it's already difficult to support higher valuations. By the end of 2025, Dark Side of the Moon completed Series C financing of 500 million US dollars, and the post-investment valuation reached 4.3 billion US dollars. Since then, the company's financing has accelerated markedly. In the first two months of 2026, Dark Side of the Moon completed multiple rounds of financing, and the valuation rose from the previous 4.3 billion US dollars to 10 billion US dollars, and further reached 18 billion US dollars. In May of this year, the company also completed Series D financing of about 2 billion US dollars, and the post-investment valuation reached 20 billion US dollars. Participants are no longer just internet companies and market-based investment institutions; China Mobile, Guozhi Investment, CPE Yuanfeng, and several state-owned background funds have also begun to enter the shareholder list. Round D has just been completed, and a new round of funding will commence in June. At that time, the pre-investment valuation reported in the market had reached 31.5 billion US dollars. Today, the round has finally ended with over $3.5 billion in funding, and the post-investment valuation of Dark Side of the Moon has risen to $35 billion. Looking back at this financing curve, the most obvious change occurred in the past six months. At the end of 2025, Dark Side of the Moon was still valued at $4.3 billion. More than half a year later, that figure has reached $35 billion, a seven-fold increase. If the next round is completed according to the $50 billion pre-investment valuation, the valuation of Dark Side of the Moon will increase by more than 160 times in more than three years. The reasons given by capital are also becoming more straightforward. In the past, investors were betting on Yang Zhilin and a Tsinghua technical team; now they are betting on whether Dark Side of the Moon can become one of the few companies in China to stay on the cutting edge of the global model table. After K3, Dark Side of the Moon returned to the center of the table where this round of financing was closed early, just after Kimi K3 was released. On July 16, The Dark Side of the Moon was released...

23d agoburnking#IPOs #KIMI #Pre #financing

Dark Side of the Moon (Kimi) completes stock reform, paving the way for Hong Kong listing

Comparative news, according to monitoring, the Dark Side of the Moon (Kimi) has changed its name to Beijing Moon Dark Side Technology Co., Ltd., and the company type has changed from a limited liability company to an unlisted company limited by shares. Yang Zhilin became the chairman and manager, Zhang Yutong was added as a director, and Song Sijia was added as the head of finance. This change is commonly known as stock reform. The Securities Regulatory Commission stipulates that if a domestic enterprise is listed directly overseas as a domestic entity, the issuer must be a company limited by shares. Bloomberg previously said that Dark Side of the Moon has issued investors a shareholder resolution to go public in Hong Kong. It is possible to do an IPO within half a year as soon as possible, and begin dismantling the red-chip structure. The company has yet to officially announce the listing date.

23d ago

Kimi's talent battle style: not only give money, but also allow researchers to earn both fame and fortune

Comparative news, according to monitoring, Chinese AI companies are fiercely competing for research talents, and large companies with strong capital continue to recruit people from startups. According to the Financial Times, the dark side of the Moon has preserved a strong and stable domestic research team. Many of the founding members met Yang Zhilin at Tsinghua University or Carnegie Mellon University. Long-term joint study and research have made the team more stable than a temporary star lineup. After DeepSeek R1 was released, Yang Zhilin believed that the company had invested in commercialization too early and decided to refocus resources to train the model and open source the main model. As a result, researchers can publish results, obtain personal signatures, and industry reputation. The Dark Side of the Moon uses cutting-edge research to attract talents, and then uses open source to name researchers. For researchers who value papers, technical influence, and personal reputation, this is more appealing than simply joining a major company to do commercial projects.

27d ago

Tsinghua genius+rock drummer, this guy from Chaoshan is making Silicon Valley uneasy

In the middle of the night of July 16, 2026, when Yang Zhilin's Kimi K3 model went online, no one anticipated what would happen next. On the first day, it reached the top of the Arena AI front-end code arena with 1,679 points, beating Claude and GPT. Some people overseas call it the “DeepSeek 2.0 Moment.” The next day, Musk wrote “Impressive” on social platforms and immediately announced that his new model with 2 trillion parameters “may surpass Kimi”. The dark side of the Moon responded: “Welcome Musk to the '2 Trillion+ Club'.” On the third day, Kimi's user requests exceeded estimates, approaching the cluster's carrying limit, and the team issued an announcement late at night to suspend new user subscriptions. On the fourth day, US White House officials publicly accused the dark side of the Moon of “stealing technology” and “circumventing chip export controls.” On the fifth day, NASDAQ opened down 1.8% due to factors such as the K3 release, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 5.2%. On the sixth day, Bloomberg reported that K3 is thought to be able to narrow the AI gap between China and the US. Some scholars pointed out that the gap may narrow to two to three months. On the 7th day, Hu Xijin sent an article reminding Yang Zhilin to “not go to America for a while.” In seven days, a post-90s Shantou native messed up Silicon Valley, the White House, and Wall Street at the same time. Code as instrument, rock and roll as bone Yang Zhilin was born in 1992 to an ordinary family in Shantou, Guangdong. Her growth trajectory was unique from the beginning. As a teenager, he had two hobbies: rock and roll and code. He attended Jinshan Middle School in Shantou in high school. He was selected for the Informatics Olympiad training course without any programming background. Most of his classmates have been writing code since middle school; he started ridiculously late. However, just one year later, he won the first prize in the Guangdong Division of the National Youth Informatics League and was eligible for Tsinghua promotion. But he wanted to prove that he was more than just a “caretaker.” He participated in independent enrollment and went through the college entrance examination again, and decided to take the college entrance examination as an ordinary college candidate — 667 points, the top science champion in Shantou City. He was accepted to Tsinghua three times and became a legend in the local area. Yang Zhilin (center), winner of the 2011 Shantou Science College Entrance Examination, was offered free air tickets by Air China. (Source: Hualong Chaoshan Network) After entering Tsinghua, he was transferred to a thermal energy project — commonly known as a “burning boiler”. In his sophomore year, he made a decision that was puzzling to others: switch majors to computer science. The reason it's very “rock”: Love it. And this love comes from a novel by Haruki Murakami — a programmer character in the novel who writes code late at night to implement technology, making him full of hope. Transferring majors meant finishing everyone's freshman programming classes. But in the end, he graduated with the first grade, scoring over 95 points in 90% of the majors. At the same time, he formed the rock band Splay in Tsinghua as a drummer and songwriter. The band's name comes from the data structure “Splay Tree” — an ingenious pun. In the 2014 Tsinghua School Song Contest, they won the “Best Original Song Award”. (First grade, countless papers) Many years later, when recalling her biggest regret as an undergraduate, Yang Zhilin said, “My band didn't win the title in the original competition; they only won an original song award.” Entrepreneurship is written in the DNA of Chaoshan people. In 2015, Yang Zhilin graduated with the first place in the Tsinghua Computer Department and went to Carnegie Mellon University to study under Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Apple's first AI director. Graduated after four years—a full two years faster than the usual six years. While reading the blog, he did two jobs that were frequently quoted later: Transformer-XL and XLNet, which were cited more than 20,000 times in total. Transformer is the underlying framework for all big models today, and his work is equivalent to making key node improvements on this skeleton. As a result, he became the most cited researcher in the field of NLP in China under 35. After K3 was released, Yang Zhilin was furious, and many people were asking: Why didn't he stay in the US? Some people speculate that it's because of the visa; others say the H-1B didn't win. Rumors spread so much that his mentor Russ Salakhutdinov had to come forward and clarify: the truth is that at Yang Zhilin's level, there are countless opportunities to stay in the US and close to graduation. Apple wanted to recruit him, and Google and Meta also provided opportunities. Stanford and MIT both asked him if he wanted to work as a postdoctorate, and an Apple executive even gave him a position in the Beijing office. Salakhutdinov said, “I remember him telling me that if he didn't even get a chance to start a business, he would regret it for the rest of his life. I respected his decision and he was right.” In February 2023, Yang Zhilin began concentrating on the first round of financing. He later recalled that it was an extremely narrow window: “If de...

29d agoWendy#AI #KIMI #original #Yang Zhilin

Kimi K3 released, Silicon Valley panics: the AI gap between China and the US has been reduced to 4 months

Source: RFI Original title: What is the magic of Kimi K3 released in China? “It became the only source of discussion in Silicon Valley,” Thomas Pontirolli, a reporter for the technology edition of “The Echo”, reported on Monday (July 20) that by releasing the largest open source artificial intelligence model in history, Moonshot AI shook the entire artificial intelligence community. Although the “DeepSeek Moment” has yet to be recreated, the startup has indeed narrowed the gap between China and the US in the AI field to an unprecedented extent. According to estimates by the British AI Safety Research Institute, the gap between the Chinese model and the US has been reduced to 4 to 7 months, compared to 6 to 10 months last year. The news shook America's AI lab over the weekend. On Thursday, on the eve of the Shanghai World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Chinese startup Moonshot AI unveiled its new flagship model: Kimi K3, an open source model with 2.8 trillion parameters, the largest in the category so far. The Beijing startup is 36% owned by Alibaba. In May of this year, it raised $2 billion at a valuation of over $20 billion and is preparing to go public. Its founder, Yang Zhilin, collaborated with Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio to publish a paper. Previously, the K2 model was used by the US software company Cursor and the takeaway platform DoorDash. So it's not an unknown person, but the news still caught the industry by surprise. The “worrying” report notes that Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie told Bloomberg: “This was certainly a surprise to many. This has become the only source of discussion in Silicon Valley.” He sees this as a “major step forward” in the open source model. David Sacks, who was the head of AI in the White House in the Trump administration, called the matter “worrying.” According to the only Chinese company data currently available, K3 is clearly ahead of Anthropic's benchmark model Claude Fable 5 in terms of long programming tasks (42 to 35) and online information retrieval (91.2 to 88), but it still lags behind in traditional software development (81.2 vs. 86.6). The report notes that compared to OpenAI's latest top model, GPT-5.6 Sol, the results are closer: they are almost flat in terms of scientific reasoning (93.5 vs. 94.1). Moonshot AI also admits that there is still a “clear gap” with American AI in terms of user experience. Despite this, parts of Wall Street were volatile on Friday. The K3 effect report mentioned that in the intraday session on Friday 17th, Nvidia fell 3%, AMD once fell to 5%, Intel fell 4%, and Applied Materials and Fanlin Group both fell by more than 4%. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 5.7% at one point (then rebounded). The index has fallen by more than 20% since its high at the end of June, and the global semiconductor industry's market value has evaporated by $3.3 trillion since June 22. The impact of K3 also affected the Chinese market itself. On the same day, the stock prices of the two companies listed in Hong Kong in January this year and directly competing with Moonshot AI fell sharply: two weeks ago, Smart Spectrum AI, which was still highly sought after due to the GLM-5.2 model, fell 28%, and MiniMax fell 16%. Some people see Kimi K3 as a new “DeepSeek moment.” In January 2025, DeepSeek released the R1 model. Not only was the performance comparable to ChatGPT and Claude at the time, but it was also free, and the training cost was significantly lower. This move shook up the entire AI investment logic at the time — industry giants that invested billions of dollars were impacted; the biggest beneficiary, Nvidia, evaporated 590 billion US dollars in market value in a single day. The market “overreacted” report analysis said, however, that the situation may be different this time around. First, it's unclear under what conditions Kimi K3 will be open for use: Moonshot AI promised to open on July 27, but no license agreement has yet been announced. Furthermore, China may also impose export controls on the industry like in other fields. Second, in the current context of increasingly sensitive computing costs and opposition to the construction of new data centers, this model seems too large. The internal deployment of the K3 requires at least 64 processors. And its price is three times higher than the previous generation. “This is the most expensive model ever commercialized by a Chinese AI lab,” notes developer Simon Willison. As companies increasingly focus on the profitability of AI projects, this could also be a hindrance. The report also...

32d agoWendy#AI #DeepSeek #KIMI K3 #Moonshot AI #big model

Foreigners quarreled over Kimi K3 and asked why the US didn't keep Yang Zhilin

Comparative news, according to monitoring, after Kimi K3 was released, the extranet's attention quickly switched from the model to Yang Zhilin. The media began to review his experience: studying in Tsinghua as an undergraduate, graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a PhD, worked for Google Brain and Meta, and finally returned to the dark side of China's founding month. K3 is close to America's cutting-edge model in terms of programming and agent tasks, causing many people to ask: Why didn't the US leave him behind? One faction placed the blame on the US immigration system. Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, said the US is using immigration policies to scare away top global talent. YC partner Ankit Gupta put it bluntly that the US doesn't directly issue a green card to every AI doctor, which is simply foolish. However, Yang Zhilin's mentor Russ Salakhutdinov later clarified that this explanation did not apply to Yang Zhilin. He had many opportunities to stay in the US at the time, and Apple executives also took the initiative to invite him to join. Yang Zhilin still persists in returning home to start a business because he feels that if he doesn't try it once, he will regret it for the rest of his life. On the other side, some exclusive accounts have turned their finger on Russ and American universities. Some people claim that the American academic community has failed Americans, and even blamed the ethnic composition of its students. There are also scholars who defend Russ, arguing that he is only proud of his student's achievements and should not be subject to nationalist siege as a result. Carnegie Mellon University professor Jian Ma later said that of course Yang Zhilin's success is rare, but American universities also have many equally outstanding international students. Increasing uncertainty about immigration and international exchanges will only make it more difficult for the US to attract these talents.

34d ago

Hurun U35 list released: Sun Yuchen selected, Bochang TRON ranked first in the value of starting a business

Recently, Hurun Research Institute released “2025 Hurun U35 China Entrepreneurship Pioneer”. Sun Yuchen, founder of Bochang TRON, was selected based on his long-term practice in blockchain infrastructure, stablecoin payments, and global innovation. According to data from Hurun Research Institute, the value of the wave field reached RMB 227.5 billion, ranking first among U35 start-ups on the current list, accounting for nearly half of the total value of all U35 generation startups on the list. This significant leading edge further highlights Sun Yuchen's representation among young entrepreneurs in China and the infrastructure-level value of Bochang TRON in the global blockchain industry. Leading the corporate value list, long-term entrepreneurial practices have been recognized by authorities. “Hurun U35 China Entrepreneurship Pioneer” aims to find young entrepreneurs aged 35 and under who have both growth and social influence. A total of 187 people were selected this year, of which 116 are first-generation entrepreneurs, covering cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, life and health, advanced manufacturing, and digital technology. As an important part of Hurun's “U Series”, previous editions of the list have discovered strong brain technology Han Bicheng, Shangtang technology Xu Bing, Bilibili Xu Yi, Keep Wang Ning, and representatives of the new economy such as Yang Zhilin, MiniMax Yan Junjie, and Zhiyuan robot Peng Zhihui. In this year's list, Sun Yuchen led a generation of entrepreneurs with Bochang TRON's corporate value performance. Hurun Research Institute's valuation of Wave Field reached 227.5 billion yuan, while the average value of current U35 generation startups is 4.2 billion yuan; if Wave Field is excluded, the average value of the remaining enterprises is 2.2 billion yuan. Bochang alone accounts for nearly half of the total value of all U35 generation startups on the list, reaching 47%, reflecting that after years of development, it has grown from a blockchain startup project to a digital infrastructure with global user scale, network effects, and continuous application requirements. Sun Yuchen founded Bochang TRON in 2017 and continues to promote its implementation in the fields of stablecoin circulation, on-chain payments, decentralized finance, and the global developer ecosystem. Previously, in an exclusive interview with Hurun Baifu, he summarized his entrepreneurial goal as to enable anyone in the world, no matter what country they are in or whether they have a bank account, to transfer and use their own funds easily and inexpensively. This vision also forms the core logic of Wavefield TRON's long-term development path. TRC20-USDT surpassed 90 billion US dollars, and real demand forms the basis for value, TRON's corporate value, based on continuously expanding demand for on-chain applications and stablecoin settlement. Since cooperating with Tether to issue TRC20-USDT in 2019, Bochang TRON has gradually become an important global USDT issuance, transfer and value settlement network due to its characteristics such as fast transfer speed, low processing fees, and stable network operation. According to the latest data, TRC20-USDT circulation on the Bochang TRON chain has officially surpassed 90 billion US dollars, setting a new historical record, accounting for about 48% of the global USDT circulation; the number of accounts held has exceeded 74.9 million, and the cumulative number of transfers has exceeded 3.5 billion. At the same time, the total number of accounts on the Bochang TRON network has exceeded 390 million, and the cumulative number of transactions has exceeded 14.6 billion. The global user base and network effects continue to expand. In an exclusive interview with Hurun Baifu, Sun Yuchen said that things that can actually cross the cycle must be supported by real needs. Every round of market adjustments will eliminate noise and bubbles, but the number of users and on-chain transactions continues to grow, indicating that the problems solved by blockchain actually exist. At the same time, he saw the launch of TRC20-USDT in collaboration with Tether as a key decision in the development of the wave field, and concluded: “If the general trend is right, you must dare to rush, but you must choose the strongest target.” From stablecoin issuance, cross-border transfers, and peer-to-peer payments, to on-chain settlement and the demand for digital dollars in emerging markets, Wavechang TRON is continuously expanding the application boundaries of global value circulation. This time, Sun Yuchen was selected as “2025 Hurun U35 China Entrepreneurial Pioneer”, which not only recognizes his entrepreneurial ability, global vision, and long-term investment, but also further confirms the leading position of WavechangTRON in the global Web3 ecosystem from the two dimensions of corporate value and actual business scale. For more information, see https://www.hurun.net/zh-CN/Info/Detail?num=NYEJQQ9X2ENL...

43d agoburnking#Tron

DeepSeek launched the mapping mode, but can't recognize Liang Wenfeng

Compared to the news, DeepSeek officially launched the web version of the mapping mode, and the app is in closed beta. Judging from the functionality, the map recognition model launched this time is still in its early stages. The reporter tested the model several times using photos of DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng. After a few minutes of thinking, the model gave quite a few wrong answers, and finally simply admitted, “I'm really unsure. Guessing names is not recommended because guessing wrong is worse than saying 'I don't know. '” However, in tests by other netizens, faced with a picture of founder Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek even identified it as the “young version” of the Dark Side of the Moon founders Yang Zhilin and Ma Huateng. It is worth noting that on the eve of the launch of the mapping model, DeepSeek was just revealed to have finalized an initial round of financing of over 50 billion yuan. According to market news, the core of DeepSeek's investment terms is: whether for large companies or VC funds, Liang Wenfeng's most important requirement is not to dig into DeepSeek's people or suggest that they go out to start a business. The reporter asked DeepSeek insiders about the relevant situation and learned that the statement was basically true.

65d ago

The dark side of the moon is finalizing a new round of financing, and the pre-investment valuation rises to $4.8 billion

Comparatively, according to the “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” report, the Dark Side of the Moon (Kimi) is finalizing a new round of financing. The pre-investment valuation of this round of financing reached 4.8 billion US dollars. A few weeks ago, the dark side of the month's valuation was 4.3 billion US dollars. It is reported that this round of financing will soon be settled, and Dark Side of the Moon has yet to comment on this financing. Earlier, on December 31, 2025, the Dark Side of the Moon (Kimi) revealed that it had recently completed Series C financing of 500 million US dollars, IDG led an investment of 150 million US dollars, and that old shareholders such as Ali, Tencent, and Wang Huiwen had oversubscribed, with a post-investment valuation of 4.3 billion US dollars. Yang Zhilin, founder and CEO of Dark Side of the Moon, released an internal letter stating that the company has cash reserves of over RMB 10 billion. This scale is no less than that of MiniMax after the IPO. As of June 2025, the Smart Spectrum account has 2.55 billion yuan in cash, and the IPO is expected to raise about 3.8 billion yuan. As of September 2025, MiniMax has 7.35 billion yuan in cash on its accounts, and the IPO is expected to raise 3.4 billion to 3.8 billion yuan. According to sources, this means Dark Side of the Moon can be in no hurry to do an IPO.

214d ago