Advertisement
ByteDance and Kuaishou see exodus of top AI experts to new ventures as China’s unicorn boom looks for next OpenAI
- ByteDance’s Yang Hongxia and Kuaishou’s Fu Ruiji have left their respective companies to pursue new AI initiatives
- The departure of these AI experts reflects increased investor interest in start-ups that could become the next OpenAI
Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Ann Caoin Shanghai
Chinese social media giants ByteDance and Kuaishou Technology, which operate the country’s two largest short video platforms, have seen an exodus of top artificial intelligence (AI) experts amid increased investor interest in start-ups that could become the next OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.
Advertisement
Yang Hongxia, who was involved in research and development of large language models (LLMs) at ByteDance, recently left the Beijing-based company to start preparing for her own AI projects, according to a report by Chinese media 36Kr. LLMs are the technology behind generative AI services like ChatGPT.
Separately, Fu Ruiji – a tech leader at Kuaishou’s Knowledge Graph and LLM projects – left the firm to “prepare for an AI start-up project”, Chinese media outlet LingTai reported.
Details of Yang and Fu’s new endeavours are unclear. They could not be reached for comment.
Both ByteDance and Kuaishou did not immediately reply to requests for comment on Monday.
The departure of those experts reflect China’s new unicorn boom that has so far yielded four “AI tigers”, each of which has raised billions of dollars from deep-pocketed investors.
Advertisement
Advertisement