The China AI giant model is going global, according to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily on June 23.

According to overseas media the Information, Yuezhianmian is preparing to enter the US market by developing products recently launched in the US, including an AI role-playing chat application and a music video generator.

In the 2024 Huawei Cloud's Global Summit for Chinese Enterprises' Globalization held recently, mature companies such as Duanwenwen, Wondershare, and HeHe Information placed a great emphasis on demonstrating their AIGC applications for overseas businesses. Among them, Duanwenwen stated that the AIGC business had already launched overseas in 2022, and the AI dubbing software DupDub was launched overseas.

Some entrepreneurial teams have started directly overseas. HeyGen, an AI video generator founded in Shenzhen and later moved to the United States, is an example. Its previous main entity Shi Yun Technology, has raised funds from well-known institutions such as Zhen Fund, Sequoia China Seed Fund, and IDG Capital all within less than a year.

Commercialization of large-scale model enterprises is diverging.

Yuezhianmian only stated "there is no plan" in response to inquiries about its entry into the US market.

However, investors in the primary market who are familiar with Yuezhianmian believe that the company has a strong motivation for overseas development. "The founding team is not interested in to B business and wants to do to C. The overseas market is currently more active, and users have a stronger willingness to pay."

Yuezhianmian founder Yang Zhilin has publicly stated that Yuezhianmian is committed to to C and that "the top priority now is to find the direction of the product, technology, and market at the C-end."

It is worth mentioning that Yang Zhilin's previous entrepreneurship project, Cycle Intelligence, was a heavy to B company.

Another domestic leading large-scale model company Minimax's to C business has achieved initial market penetration. The company launched the Talkie AI virtual character chat software overseas in June 2023. According to publicly available product data, Talkie has accumulated nearly 14 million downloads and nearly 830,000 U.S. dollars in revenue since its launch.

Some who understand the overseas business of the Internet said to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that although Talkie has achieved millions of daily active users and a certain scale of revenue, the distance to profitability may still be far away considering the investment needed compared with the per-user cost in the first-tier countries.

Investors in the primary market mentioned that several domestic leading large-scale model start-ups, except for Zhifu, have trouble commercializing.

Zhang Peng, CEO of Zhifu AI, introduced the company's four commercialization models in a previous media interview, including the API calling model and the software and hardware integrated machine program. Overall, Zhifu AI is more focused on to B business, and at the current stage, it faces more central state-owned enterprises and government customers.

Zhang Peng stated that Zhifu AI is currently also expanding its overseas business, targeting international companies entering China and Chinese companies going abroad. "We need to maintain communication with the government, regulatory agencies, and various industries, which is something we need to do."

Whether it is recent successive price cuts or actively promoting overseas markets, the focus of the current state of large-scale model manufacturers is business anxiety. An insider close to a large-scale model company revealed to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that the cost of training a large-scale model has reached tens of millions of RMB, and it is difficult to sustain the status quo of project burning without finding a commercialization plan that can support such a level of cost.

Meanwhile, Open AI's commercialization is also accelerating. It was recently revealed that Open AI's annualized revenue doubled in the past six months, reaching $3.4 billion.

Where are the opportunities for AI super applications?

Several interviewees mentioned three reasons behind domestic AI start-ups entering overseas markets. "First, the global market space is several times that of the domestic market, and the valuations of some companies can no longer tell stories only from the Chinese market; second, AIGC is a creative product, and overseas to B and to C users may have a stronger willingness to create and pay, respectively, than in China; third, overseas supervision is relatively loose, for example, social companion products are less subject to regulatory risks overseas."

Minimax launched the virtual chat app Glow as overseas version of Talkie in 2022, but it only operated for just over a year before being taken down due to privacy and sensitive content issues.

Some AIGC start-up teams have achieved considerable revenue through subscription, which is more familiar to overseas users. Opus Clips, an AI video generation tool, is an example. According to its description on the company's homepage, Opus Clips achieved an annualized revenue of $4 million just four months after the launch. Information showed that Zhao Yang, co-founder and CEO of Opus Clips, previously co-founded Zaihui Technology.

HeyGen, a start-up video generation company, is also an example of rapidly achieving revenue in overseas markets. According to the company's founder and CEO Xu Zhuo's media interview last November, the company's revenue had reached $18 million at that time.

It is worth mentioning that before fully going abroad, HeyGen had registered the domestic entity Shiyun Technology, but the entity soon became a canceled status. However, insiders disclosed to the "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" that HeyGen's complete overseas business is closely related to its previous experience of vicious competition and suppression by competitors in the domestic market.

However, primary market investors focusing on the AI field told the "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" that the revenue scale of these AIGC startups is still in the "small business" category. It may be enough to support small and beautiful independent developer teams, but for larger AI startups, they still need a bigger business map for sustainable development. "Overseas payment environment is better, but how much it is worth depends on the situation."

Since March this year, due to the huge gap between expenditure and income, many famous AI startups overseas have been hit hard by financial pressure. Stability AI, which recently announced investment from a group of investors, has previously been exposed to a series of negative news such as CEO resignation, serious losses, and nearly $100 million in unpaid bills, and its operations are now in a precarious position.

Now that it has announced new financing and appointed a new CEO, Stability AI may be able to survive for a while longer with the financing. However, finding a suitable business model to achieve self-generation is undoubtedly the most urgent task facing Stability AI and a group of AI 2.0-era entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs and investors are both looking for opportunities to achieve this goal. The aforementioned primary market investors told the "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" that after basically understanding all AI companies in the domestic market, they believe that 3D generation in multimodal may have opportunities in the domestic market. "3D AI is not technologically inferior to overseas, and this area does not require too much computing power."

The "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" journalist also learned that other investors regularly go to Silicon Valley to find Chinese entrepreneurial teams that have the potential to succeed.