Former Alibaba star researcher Junyang Lin announced that he had started a new AI company #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖
Lin, who left Alibaba in March, said in a post on X that his Shanghai-based startup, Pragmatik Labs, is focusing on “next-generation agents across digital and physical worlds.” Lin also said Chinese venture capital firms Gaorong Ventures and HongShan led the funding round for Pragmatik, while Tencent also participated. The funding round valued the startup at about $2 billion.
This is the first time Lin shared publicly about his startup. Pragmatik is building digital AI agents for knowledge work as well as physical AI agents that enable robots to perform real-world tasks, according to its website. The Information first reported in May that Lin was in talks to raise money for the startup.
Over the past several months, numerous new AI research startups have emerged in China, many working on world models, AI systems that can understand and simulate the physical world. While many of those neolabs are led by university professors and doctoral students with little prior experience at commercial labs or tech firms, Pragmatik stands out because of Lin’s track record with Qwen models at Alibaba.
https://pragmatik.com
