Chinese AI startup Ling Xin Intelligence, founded by a professor from Tsinghua University, has been fully acquired by technology company Zhipu AI, according to a September 22 report by 36Kr. Zhipu AI, a company founded by Tsinghua alumni in 2019, focuses on the development of large language models. Prior to the move, Zhipu AI had participated in Ling Xin Intelligence’s angel and Pre-A funding rounds in 2021 and 2023, respectively. An industry insider said the valuation of Ling Xin Intelligence was hundreds of millions of yuan when the acquisition was finalized. Ling Xin Intelligence was founded in late 2021 by Huang Minlie, an associate professor from the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University. His main research areas cover natural language processing, dialogue systems, natural language generation, and sentiment analysis. In August of this year, Ling Xin Intelligence started invitational testing for its large language model Echo, which is co-developed with Tsinghua CoAI Lab. The model is designed to provide users with empathy and companionship, the firm said at the time. [36Kr, in Chinese]

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