Yang is considered “an entrepreneur with potential”, said Cao Xi, founding partner at Hong Kong investment company Monolith Management and a former partner at Sequoia Capital China. Monolith is among the group of venture capital firms backing Moonshot AI, which declined to provide details of the latest funding round.
While Moonshot AI did not make him available for an interview, Yang’s stellar academic track record and industry experience have been closely scrutinised by investors.
Soon after ChatGPT’s launch, Yang made a trip to the US in December 2022 to learn about this GenAI application and to recruit talent for his own AI venture. He told mainland media that he felt it was time to “ride the wave” in GenAI.
Along with Tsinghua University schoolmates Zhou Xinyu and Wu Yuxin, Yang co-founded Moonshot AI in March last year. He managed to raise US$60 million as initial funding and assembled a team of around 40 AI specialists within the first three months of the company.
Kimi’s user base has steadily grown, as Moonshot AI’s “lossless long context is better than OpenAI in many applications”, Yang told mainland media.
The name of his company, according to Yang, came from his love for classic rock music during his years at Tsinghua University, where he had formed a band. During the Post’s visit last month to Moonshot AI headquarters in Beijing, the 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon, by English rock band Pink Floyd, was seen on top of a white Yamaha digital piano at the office’s entrance.
