China Start-up 01.ai Hits Us$1 Billion Value With Top-ranked Open-source Model

01.AI, a Chinese start-up founded by computer scientist Kai-fu Lee, has become a unicorn in less than eight months with the help of its open-source artificial-intelligence model, Yi-34B. The model outperforms leading open-source models already on the market, including Meta Platform’s Llama 2, on key metrics. The company has reached a valuation of more than US$1 billion after a funding round that included Alibaba’s cloud unit.