Yunqi Capital · Riding the AGI Wave | 3 Weeks, 3 Cities: We Spoke with 150+ Founders About New Variables in the AGI Era

云启资本·April 18, 2023

Embracing the AGI+ Era

A new wave of productivity revolution is upon us. The tools we choose will be what enables us to reshape the world alongside humanity.

New technologies are iterating at speeds beyond imagination. We look forward to riding this wave with more thinkers and doers, stepping into the AGI+ era.

Cover image: Yunqi Capital × Midjourney

➤➤➤ Grand dreams require daily, incremental progress.

The development of artificial general intelligence has weathered many peaks and troughs. Few foresaw that the critical mass point would arrive now. But we have always believed that technological innovation will bring new progress. As witnesses to this wave, we deeply feel that forward-looking vision and idealism are indispensable — and so are technical depth and industry insight. In 2021, after in-depth exchanges with the MiniMax team, we became the only early-stage investor in the company's angel round. Today, MiniMax has become the first startup in China to possess foundational large models across three modalities — voice, image, and text. Its first product, Glow, has nearly 5 million users with daily call volumes exceeding 100 million. Moreover, MiniMax has been integrated into WPS, truly becoming infrastructure that no one can do without in daily work and life. Several of our portfolio companies have already launched new products, embracing AGI.

Cheng Yu Mao, Founding Partner

We feel both deeply challenged and genuinely excited about the arrival of AGI+. Going forward, there will be many new possibilities for small models and vertical application layers built atop large models. Technology will undoubtedly drive industry progress, and we will embrace the inevitable transformation with sufficient confidence and patience.

Yu Chen, Partner

Going forward, the integration of multi-disciplinary models will be a major trend in large model development, enabling seamless human-machine collaboration that allows both AI and human capabilities to be more fully realized. This represents an important paradigm for vertical application layers — even if ChatGPT's learning paradigm can achieve more complex and superhuman reasoning capabilities, it must still be built on a foundation of data.

Over the past three weeks, we hosted three AGI+ salons at our Anfu Road courtyard in Shanghai, our Beijing office, and at Coohom in Hangzhou — over 30 hours of creative brainstorming and deep thinking, with 200+ entrepreneurs, industry experts, frontline programmers, and product managers participating.

On-site, we prompted multiple questions about new directions, new thinking, and new approaches in the AGI+ era, and received compelling answers from over 30 entrepreneurs and investors with diverse perspectives.

We thank AI assistant Midjourney for generating avatars for our guests, and NotionAI for its tremendous support in content summarization and production.

Golden quotes abounded — here's a preview:

How Should Startups Embrace AGI?

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MiniMax

Technological long-termism definitely exists. Large models aren't built in a single run. We saw a confirmed trend, so we started earlier, with more confidence, and with greater persistence in the face of failure.

Xiaohuang Huang, Co-founder & Chairman, Coohom

The way companies operate has already undergone various changes: data infrastructure originally user-facing is gradually transitioning toward AI-facing data infrastructure; product design patterns are also increasingly considering interactions between system modules under AI architecture.

Mojie, Co-founder, Coolxueyuan

We need to define the boundaries and pace of AI utilization. Our ultimate goal is to build products that better serve customers, not to build an AI product. By progressively allocating effort to adapt to AI tools at each stage, we can maximize work efficiency.

Pengfei Qin, Co-founder, Weiling Technology

Building company moats still comes down to specific scenarios, data, and feedback. The shift from "image-voice-text" has now become a foundational capability. CRM companies will leverage powerful content generation tools to further empower customers.

Zhigang Chen, Founder & CEO, Hetan Medicine

Going forward, the alignment of multi-disciplinary knowledge will be an important application direction for AI, as well as a challenge and opportunity for startups. For example, in cross-disciplinary reasoning, AI can mobilize external models to generate more unexpected applications.

Hao Wu, Author of SaaS Startup Roadmap

AGI is like a slowly approaching tide — the water level is rising gradually, not rapidly enough to drown people immediately. But even if SaaS is a "slow business," if we're still standing on a rock today rather than in a boat, we will inevitably be overwhelmed by the wave.

How Will AGI Disrupt Traditional Industries?

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Yan Chen, Founder & CEO, Xiaoxiang Zhihe

AI will redefine flexible manufacturing. The traditional "goods waiting for people" model may be replaced. The new commercial closed loop will be "what you see is what you get" — creativity and new ideas will become the new commercial entry point. AI will collaborate with us to form industry-level flexible, high-efficiency, intelligent solutions.

Kaixuan Nie, Founder & CEO, Songying Technology

We've introduced the concept of a digital content production line. Starting from a scalable, modular framework, we're using AI to transform machine tools that previously required manual operation into CNC machine tools, and even iterate toward fully automated machine tools.

Bin Liu, CTO, WorldEx

ToB industry engineers often need to solve complex model mapping problems, which requires deep understanding of the business side. The emergence of large models can help engineers understand architectural logic, potentially lowering the barrier to enterprise modeling.

Jianghua Li, Founder & CEO, Yundong Cloud

In the past, ToB products were basically menu-driven. The first intuitive change AI brings is a shift in interaction patterns — menus may be directly replaced, with users accessing needed functions through conversation or voice.

Zhongyi Zhang, Founder & CEO, Xunpanyun

AGI has significant advantages in foreign trade applications. It can provide full-process management tools, including marketing content generation, customer follow-up, and sales strategy formulation, while helping customers accumulate and summarize sales leads, forming new insights.

Dan Wu, Founding Partner & COO, Zhenling Technology

With AI加持, the competency structure and thinking patterns of product managers will undergo profound transformation — this represents an important upgrade opportunity for product managers.

What Remains Unchanged Amid Change?

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Shicong Feng, Founder & CEO, Bailing AI

From day one, AI has been an important component of our product. AI is evolving now, but customers care more about results than methods. We will gradually use new AI to iterate our products and serve customers amid change.

Huashao, Chairman, Coolxueyuan

A company's core moat still lies in the value its product delivers to customers. Only by embracing the changes AGI brings and developing new products based on customer needs can competitiveness be improved.

Jinwu Tang, CEO, Langjing Technology

As a tool, AGI will significantly improve company operational efficiency. But the essence of the retail ecosystem hasn't changed — regardless of how AI technology advances, physical space connections between people are irreplaceable.

Dahai, Operations Consultant, Thoughtworks

Even in the large model era, based on first principles, what companies need to consider is still how to "benefit themselves by benefiting customers." More companies should consider strengthening the connection between their KPIs and customer gain metrics.

Wei Yu, Chairman, Ruiqi Technology

Technology has always been about solving real-world needs. Traditional industries already had a solid foundation in the mobile internet era. Timely embracing new technologies for transformation will better improve efficiency and service quality.

Yunqi Perspectives

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Yao Feng, Managing Director

We're now seeing two modes of thinking: one seeks optimization space from existing patterns, such as how to use AI to improve sales, supply chain, delivery, and other individual links; the other completely discards existing frameworks and seeks entirely new architectures from the perspective of how technology can disrupt. Going forward, these two modes will frequently collide, and we hope entrepreneurs can think in both modes.

Yi Han, Executive Director

Future products will be understanding-based products. In the past, product managers designed a product and then optimized based on usage feedback after launch. But with the continuous emergence of various small and large models, customer needs will be more clearly revealed. As middleware becomes more complete, product managers will have more data to better understand customer needs in advance.

Emily, Frontier Technology Team

Large models will undergo very frequent iteration and updates in the next phase, and we will also face stricter regulatory directions and legal requirements. In the early stages of product design, companies need to possess capabilities for data security and privacy protection, and dynamically adjusting product direction according to regulations.

Based on the outstanding content from this series of salon events, Yunqi Capital is launching a special "Riding the AGI+ Wave" feature. Here, we will distill and present the thinking of investors and entrepreneurs, attempting to answer new questions under the new paradigm.

We will explore:

With AGI+ arriving, which new applications will land first?
What new opportunities will AI new infrastructure bring?
What are the characteristics of large model development directions in the US and globally?
In the AGI+ era, how to prepare for regulatory frameworks in advance?
With AGI bringing infinite new possibilities, how can ToB companies build core moats?
With AGI dramatically improving productivity, how can companies rapidly iterate organizational structures?
Redefining client-vendor relationships — where is the new entry point for the creative content industry?