ChatGPT Sparks AI Startup Boom: Chinese Entrepreneurs Seek Opportunities from Large Models to Real-World Applications

ChatGPT Sparks AI Startup Boom: Chinese Entrepreneurs Seek Opportunities from Large Models to Real-World Applications

In March 2023, ChatGPT's momentum continued. On March 8 local time, Microsoft announced that as new users of the Bing preview version exceeded 1 million, Bing's daily active users surpassed 100 million for the first time.^[4] Nvidia founder Jensen Huang said ChatGPT is the iPhone moment for artificial intelligence, and a global AI startup frenzy has already been unleashed; almost everything seen on the Product Hunt leaderboard is a GPT-based startup product.^[4]

At the large model level, Zhou Ming, founder of Langboat, pointed out that large models did not emerge with ChatGPT, and ChatGPT does not represent all large models. Google launched Transformer in 2017, BERT in 2018, and later the GPT series; there is also the T5 series; in China, there is also ALBERT and others. They can be roughly divided into three types: encoder-only represented by the BERT series, decoder-only represented by GPT, and encoder-decoder represented by T5. Zhou Ming believes that ChatGPT made better improvements on the basis of GPT3 and InstructGPT, and can be considered a better GPT3 or better GPT3.5, with chat capabilities.^[4]

Beyond large models, AI is also penetrating specific scenarios. Cocos co-founder and CEO Lin Shun, speaking about game engines, said AIGC is a high-probability potential disruptor. He said that if it really is a disruptor of new technology, "we might actually look forward to it more, because it must be an entirely new way of production and experience, absolutely a blessing for all of human society."^[3]

In the commercial cleaning robot sector, Guo Zhen, founder and CEO of Jingwu Intelligence, believes that 3D cleaning robots have the three key elements of humanoid robots: hands, eyes, and legs. As the terminal, the robotic arm autonomously performs more complex actions through eye recognition and leg navigation.^[5] Regarding the view that AI may replace labor, Guo Zhen said cleaning robots make up for the shortage of labor rather than replacing it; in the future, AI will not take jobs. Ultimately, it will be people who use AI tools competing against people who do not use AI tools for jobs.^[5]

The audio processing field is also benefiting from AI. Liu Zhi, founder and CEO of Huangli Zhisheng, said their progress in voice noise reduction technology benefited from advances in AI technology, deeply integrating traditional physical methods with deep learning. After continuous exploration, they only began to make breakthroughs in 2015.^[6] Huangli Zhisheng's goal is for call noise reduction to reach a "noise-killing" level, meaning that when talking in a noisy environment, the other party can only hear the speaker's own voice.^[6]

These entrepreneurs from different directions together form a cross-section of domestic AI entrepreneurship after ChatGPT's explosive rise: foundational large models are still evolving rapidly, while the application layer is seeking differentiated opportunities in scenarios such as game engines, robots, and audio processing.^[3][4][5][6]