Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI

On January 6, 2025, a rumor about "01 Wanwu was disbanded and the Kahe pre-training team was sold to Alibaba" began to appear on social media. Immediately, Li Kaifu, the founder and CEO of Lingyiwuwu, refuted the rumors:

△Li Kaifu’s response in the circle of friends.

As of press time, the official response of Zero One Thousand Things to the rumors:

△Official response of Zero One Thousand Things.

The information we obtained: Zero One laid off employees, Alibaba made an offer, but it was not an acquisition

"Smart Emergence" has exclusively learned that since December 2024, the pre-training team and Infra team of the large model unicorn "Zero One Thousand Things" have indeed undergone considerable changes:

· In mid-December 2024, Lingyiwu laid off the entire pre-training algorithm team and Infra team, including the Silicon Valley team.

· At the end of December 2024, the Zero One Thousand Things pre-training algorithm team received an offer from Tongyi Team, and the Infra team received an offer from Alibaba Cloud; currently Alibaba has incorporated the Zero One Thousand Things team to provide job opportunities form, not acquisition.

Another person familiar with the matter told "Intelligent Emergence" that in early January 2025, Kai-fu Lee mentioned at an internal meeting that Zero One Thing was short of funds and had invested a relatively large amount of money in pre-training. The company planned to transform into application.

An employee of Zero One Thousand Things told "Smart Emergence" that in mid-December, the team first received the notice of layoffs. It took about a week to get the offer from Ali, and it is currently only a verbal offer. Details The terms have not yet been negotiated. “Tongyi and Alibaba Cloud have arranged some leaders to work with members of the Zero One team. To communicate one-on-one.”

According to "Intelligent Emergence", we learned exclusively that Zero One Wanwu has also made corresponding adjustments to its AI application strategy:

In addition to PopAi, an overseas application with good revenue and growth performance, is not only responsible for its own profits and losses, but also splits the teams of some of its applications and raises external financing in the form of subsidiaries.

The business has a red light, Zero One actively saves itself

In the employees In our opinion, the financing difficulties and the departure of Lianchuang have become the triggers for Lingyiwu to frequently adjust its strategy and abolish the pre-training and Infra teams.

Since December 2024, a new round of financing for AI companies such as Zhipu and Step Star has gradually been in place. However, since it received financing from an international strategic investment and a Southeast Asian consortium in mid-2024, multiple people familiar with the matter told "Intelligent Emergence" that the financing progress between Zero One Wan and some local governments and state-owned assets has not gone smoothly. "The money on the account Can't last more than a year”.

Since August 2024, several Lianchuang companies—Li Xiangang, Huang Wenhao, Cao Dapeng, and Pan Xin—have also left one after another. A person familiar with the matter revealed that the original Lianchuang companies , only Ma Jie, who is responsible for the AI ​​game business spun off by Zero One, and Gu Xuemei, who is mainly responsible for model commercialization, are also trying to save themselves through strategic adjustments in 2023. zero one The focus of everything is still the model API, and starting from 2024, the company first made efforts to build several C-side applications, and then began to shift its focus to B-side AI marketing solutions.

Self-help, or giving. As Li Kaifu said in his article to refute the rumors, Zero-Yiwu’s confirmed revenue will be more than 100 million (more orders) in 2024, and it will increase several times in 2025. ”

Until November 2024, many Zero One Wan employees still believed that the company had transitioned to a stable period of operation.

October 16, 2024, Zero One Wanwu has just released a new pre-trained model Yi-Lightning. An employee told "Intelligent Emergence", Whether it is external rankings or internal evaluations, Lightning performed well.

At that time, Kaifu Li also issued a military order at the press conference: Zero One Thousand Things will never give up pre-training work (extension). Read below)

Among the large model "Six Little Tigers", at least two companies are giving up the large model. | Zhiyong Analysis

The above-mentioned employees revealed to "Smart Emergence" that according to the original plan, after the release of Yi-Lightning, Zero-One Wanshi also plans to pre-train a brand new model at the end of 2024. Today, the employees of the pre-training and Infra teams are almost on standby, waiting for the notification of the Last Day.