Zhipu, an artificial intelligence start-up that China hopes can be a competitor to the American startup OpenAI, has the support of many major Chinese technology companies, including Alibaba and Tencent, the company announced on Friday.

According to a statement from the company, Zhipu has raised more than 2.5 billion Chinese yuan ($341 million) this year.

Among the well-known venture capitalists are Sequoia and Hillhouse; among the corporate investors are Xiaomi, Alibaba, and Tencent, makers of smartphones.

One of the most promising start-ups in China is Zhipu, which develops AI models supported by a multitude of applications that are trained on massive volumes of data. Zhipu unveiled a chatbot that uses generative AI and its models in August. The term “generative AI” describes technology that allows AI to produce responses in response to commands from the user.

The American company OpenAI created ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that is credited with introducing the technology to the general public.

Zhipu’s remarks regarding its investors coincide with a rising technological arms race between the United States and China, with artificial intelligence playing a major role.

China intends to advance AI as a critical technology, particularly because it has the potential to boost economic productivity. The second-biggest economy in the globe intends to boost its processing capacity by 50% by 2025, which will aid in the advancement of AI applications.

But the United States has tried to deny China access to vital technologies needed to create AI models. China was prohibited from purchasing Nvidia’s high-end A100 and H100 graphics processing units by the United States last year.

Washington strengthened such regulations this month to include more Nvidia chips. Leading the industry in graphics processing units, Nvidia is a semiconductor type that aids in training artificial intelligence models that need to analyse massive volumes of data.

Zhipu is one of the Chinese firms attempting to support the development of the AI sector in their nation. China’s tech behemoths have invested in numerous of these fledgling companies.

This week, Baichuan, a different AI firm, announced that it has raised over $300 million from investors, including Tencent and Alibaba.

In the meantime, Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba are all creating their own AI models and launching businesses that rely on this technology.

(Adapted from CNBC.com)

Categories: Economy & Finance, Geopolitics, Strategy