China’s search engine pioneer unveils open-source large language model to rival OpenAI

In February, Sogou founder Wang Xiaochuan said on Weibo that “China needs its own OpenAI.” The Chinese entrepreneur is now inching closer to his dream as his nascent startup Baichuan Intelligence rolled out its next-generation large language model Baichuan-13B today.

Baichuan is being touted as one of China’s most promising LLM developers, thanks to its founder’s storied past as a computer science prodigy from Tsinghua University and founding the search engine provider Sogou, which was later acquired by Tencent.

Wang stepped down from Sogou in late 2021. As ChatGPT took the world by storm, the entrepreneur launched Baichuan in April and quickly pocketed $50 million in financing from a group of angel investors.

 

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