Former Alibaba Qwen AI model leader founds new AI company with funding from venture giants

The former head of Alibaba's (9988) Qwen artificial intelligence model division, Lin Junyang, announced the founding of a new AI company, Pragmatik (p7k) Labs, on Wednesday, just five months after his departure. 

Lin shared on X that his new company, Pragmatik Labs, located in Shanghai, has secured investments from HongShan Capital (HSG), Tencent (0700) and more. 

Pragmatik Labs focuses on the research of next-generation agents across digital and physical worlds. 

He thanked HSG and Gaorong Ventures for co-leading the funding round, and expressed gratitude to Tencent and the Shanghai Future-Oriented Industries Fund for their support. 

It was reported that the funding round is worth hundreds of millions of US dollars, with Gaorong and HSG each investing US$100 million (HK$784.74 million), and Tencent investing US$20 million.

Lin used to be Alibaba's youngest P10-level technical leader.

𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓