Kimi founder cashes out $40 million in doubt

On April 23, according to "Jiemian News", Yang Zhilin, the founder of Moonshot, cashed out $40 million by selling personal shares. In response to this news, Moonshot stated to "Jiemian" that the above-mentioned information is not true and that the company had previously disclosed an employee incentive plan. Moonshot's recent round of financing involved some old stock transactions, but old shareholders such as Sequoia did not sell their shares.

With the "long text" feature, Moonshot, which was founded just a year ago, secured a large amount of financing in February this year: with a pre-investment valuation of $1.5 billion, it leveraged $800 million in investment, most of which came from Alibaba. After the transaction, Moonshot's post-investment valuation is about $2.5 billion, making it the highest-valued unicorn in the domestic large model competition arena.

However, behind this "luxurious" financing, there have been many mysteries. According to market news, Moonshot once sold 40% of its shares to Alibaba in one go. As a star company, quickly "dumping" such a large amount of equity has sparked discussions about the future independence of Moonshot's operations.

Previously, "Jiemian" learned from a senior partner of a certain VC that the "marriage" between Kimi and Alibaba was facilitated by Zhang Yutong, a managing partner of GGV Capital in Singapore. "Alibaba's $800 million is not all in cash. As far as I know, the actual amount of investment is less than $600 million, some of which will be settled with the computing power provided by Alibaba Cloud."

According to a senior industry insider who recently disclosed to "Jiemian", Kimi's most urgent need for Alibaba's computing power has not yet entered the "realization" stage. As far as he knows, Kimi's controllable computing power is still at 3,000 Nvidia H cards (Nvidia's flagship data center chip, with the main products being H100 and H800).

Before the equity transaction with Alibaba, Kimi's computing power mainly used ByteDance's Volcano Cloud. "This computing power cluster of 3,000 cards is difficult to run better large models." In comparison, according to Meta's disclosure, its early open-source models Llama and Llama 2 were trained on a computing power cluster built with 16,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs; the latest release, Llama 3, is based on a computing power cluster built with 49,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs.

In addition to the equity transaction with Alibaba, recent personnel changes related to Moonshot's core interests and the news of Yang Zhilin's "cashing out" have also become highly suspicious.

According to a recent report by "Tencent Deep Web", Zhang Yutong, the person in charge of the Moonshot-Alibaba transaction, has recently resigned from GGV Capital and will join Moonshot. He is currently in a "transitional period" as a consultant and post-investment support in the fund.

The aforementioned senior insider disclosed to "Jiemian" that there have been rumors in the industry about Zhang Yutong leaving GGV Capital and joining Moonshot as early as mid-2023.

It is believed in the industry that Zhang Yutong's most crucial role for Moonshot is to "directly raise the valuation of a company that has just been established for a year and is full of unknown computing power reserves," allowing Moonshot to enter the first echelon of large model valuation and influence.

According to media reports, in June 2023, Moonshot completed a 2 billion yuan angel round of financing, with investors including Sequoia China, ZhenFund, and Today Capital. In July of the same year, Moonshot completed a Series A1 round of financing, led by Meituan-Dianping's Longzhu Fund. In February of this year, a round of financing led by Alibaba further pushed Moonshot's valuation to $2.5 billion.

The soaring valuation of Moonshot has made many investment institutions feel unattainable.

Relevant sources told "Jiemian" that compared to many star startups choosing to "take small steps" in financing, Moonshot's financing directly "skipped several rounds" and entered the stage of "stable valuation" in one go. In this round, the company's story is basically fixed, and it is difficult for the valuation to continue to rise, basically in a state of "waiting for exit".

However, there are still many institutions in the market eyeing Moonshot, "like wolves." Even though the AI track is facing problems such as "difficult exits," for many investors, there is "only this one chance, it's hard to invest, but if you miss it, you won't be able to get in."

According to market news, the $25 billion valuation pushed up by Alibaba has discouraged Meituan-Dianping's Longzhu Fund, Xiaohongshu, and other major companies hoping to continue to follow up in the new round.

Therefore, although it is not uncommon for company founders to improve their lives with large cash-outs after financing, the aforementioned sources stated that if the $40 million amount is true, it is significantly higher than the industry norm—but it cannot be ruled out that Yang Zhilin personally transferred old shares to new relevant investors.

Zhang Yutong's departure has also caused a stir at GGV Capital. The aforementioned sources stated that there have been differences in investment philosophy between Zhu Xiaohu and Zhang Yutong in recent years.

According to the sources, in the second half of 2022, Zhu Xiaohu expressed his intention to "retire" to a group of senior investment friends at a high-end gathering in Singapore, stating that he "doesn't want to do it anymore." In the past two years, GGV Capital's star investment projects have significantly decreased compared to its golden period. In March of this year, Zhu Xiaohu even talked about the "uselessness of AI" in an interview with "Tencent Technology."

Compared to Zhu Xiaohu's move towards "Buddhist-style" investment, Zhang Yutong is more inclined to continue "fighting," but "everyone has their own advantages, and no one can do without the other."

After Zhang Yutong left Jinsha River and joined the Dark Side of the Moon, sources revealed to "Shijie" that it is rumored that Jinsha River's LP has strong opinions about Zhang Yutong's departure. "Generally, the fund's existence is locked with the managing partner, and the partner cannot easily resign."

In a recent post on his WeChat Moments, Zhu Xiaohu's words are thought-provoking, "As an investor, the GP's fiduciary duty to the LP; as a company director, the fiduciary duty to the shareholders are untouchable high-voltage lines! Shameful!"

Prior to this, according to "Shijie," Zhang Yutong had a long-standing connection with the founding team of the Dark Side of the Moon. Not only are Yang Zhilin and Zhang Yutong alumni of Tsinghua University, but when Yang Zhilin started his first business, Zhang Yutong became his "mentor" in the investment field. In 2016, while pursuing a doctoral degree in the United States, Yang Zhilin founded the intelligent marketing SaaS service company "Circulate Intelligence," and after graduating in 2019, he returned to China and devoted himself entirely to it.

In the early days of Circulate Intelligence, Zhang Yutong, who was then the managing partner of Jinsha River Venture Capital, promoted the angel round financing of Circulate Intelligence. Subsequently, Jinsha River also participated in multiple rounds of follow-up financing for Circulate Intelligence.

In December 2021, when Circulate Intelligence completed a new round of financing led by Boyu Investment and Sequoia China, Zhang Yutong publicly stated, "Circulate Intelligence's product has achieved the dataization of the sales process, and I hope the company will continue to excel in the field of technology empowering people."

According to public information, Circulate Intelligence's main business is focused on intelligent marketing services and other areas, with target markets including banking, insurance, securities, automotive, real estate, retail, education and training, and internet services. In 2021, long before the outbreak of the large-scale model market, Circulate Intelligence announced a collaboration with Huawei and released the first Chinese large-scale language model "Pangu."

Now, among the core members of the Dark Side of the Moon, co-founder and CTO Zhang Yutao, and co-founder Zhou Xinyu, were both founding members of Circulate Intelligence during Yang Zhilin's tenure.

Now, faced with the overwhelming wealth and interests brought by the Dark Side of the Moon, Zhu Xiaohu's dissatisfaction seems to be powerless to change anything.