A Chinese generative AI start-up, touting itself as a rival to OpenAI’s Sora, raises US$14 million
- Beijing-based AIsphere has raised more than US$14 million in a round led by venture firm Fortune Capital
- Founded by former ByteDance executive Wang Changhu, AIsphere launched a beta version of its PixVerse video generator for domestic users on Monday
AIsphere, a Chinese text-to-video start-up, whose founder has vowed to catch up with OpenAI’s Sora in three to six months, completed a new funding round amid huge interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLM) in the country.
Beijing-based AIsphere has raised more than 100 million yuan (US$14 million) in the round led by venture firm Fortune Capital, according to a statement by the start-up on its WeChat account on Monday. The valuation, however, was not disclosed.
It was the third such fundraising in China within a month, after tech giant Alibaba Group Holding spearheaded investments in LLM developers MiniMax and Moonshot AI, according to media reports. Alibaba owns the Post.
Founded by Wang Changhu, a former vision technology head at TikTok owner ByteDance, in April 2023, AIsphere launched its video generator PixVerse in January for the overseas market. A beta version for domestic users was released on Monday, the company said.
AIsphere has marketed itself as having “ByteDance gene”, which the company said “solved several world-class problems in the computer-vision field given the huge scale of user data, and supported the construction and development of phenomenal video products such as Douyin and TikTok from 0 to 1”.
The start-up has attracted talent from rivals, including gaming and social giant Tencent Holdings, China’s second-largest short video app Kuaishou and Microsoft Research, to form its tech team.