(Nov 5): The scientist who oversaw development of Tencent Holdings Ltd’s flagship artificial intelligence (AI) model has raised US$50 million with a start-up planning to release a rival to OpenAI’s Sora, the latest high-profile entry in one of the more profitable of AI spheres.
Liu Wei’s Video Rebirth completed a seed round of funding from investors including Qiming Venture Partners and South Korean game maker Actoz Soft Co, according to a company statement. Liu founded the Singapore-based outfit in October last year and aims to make video creation as intuitive as talking to a chatbot.
The company is slated to launch its AI video platform in December, built atop its in-house AI models. It’s about to dive into a competitive arena that includes Alphabet Inc’s Google Veo and models from rivals closer to home like ByteDance Ltd and Kuaishou Technology.
“For large language models, the landscape is basically set; it’s very difficult to challenge the likes of OpenAI, Google and Anthropic,” Liu, a Columbia University-trained computer vision expert, said in an interview. “But when it comes to video generation, companies founded by Chinese people, especially ones like ours, have a very good chance to compete fairly with the giants.”
Some incumbent applications have already shown progress in monetisation — Kuaishou, for example, expects annual revenue from its Kling AI generator to hit US$100 million by February. And all of them are significantly better funded and richer in resources than the year-old start-up.
Liu said his model — the first version of which he and two colleagues trained in three months — builds on popular industry techniques and adds some modifications so that generated objects better align with real-world physics. His team also avoids training with short-video content to ensure better quality.
See also: Premier Li says China's economy to surpass US$23.9 tril in five years
Setting up the company in Singapore — with offices in Hong Kong — is a path increasingly followed by Chinese AI founders who want to access Nvidia Corp chips for training. US trade restrictions keep the most advanced Nvidia hardware out of China, on national security grounds. Video Rebirth won’t provide services in China, Liu said, partly because it’s an overcrowded market dominated by giants like ByteDance.
Co-founder Kong Dan, a former AI investor with Abu Dhabi’s G42, said the company will initially focus its product roll-out among professional users in the US, charging a monthly subscription that’s cheaper than Veo.
“It’s not just me. Some of the biggest names in China’s tech circles reach out to Liu and ask him what he makes of the latest AI models and developments,” said Alex Zhou, a managing partner at Qiming, explaining why he wrote Liu’s start-up the first check.
See also: China's services gauge extends growth streak, bucking slowdown
The company will use the seed funding to promote its first product launch next month and accelerate further development and improvements of its technology.
Uploaded by Tham Yek Lee
