Chinese GenAI startup AIsphere, aiming to be as powerful as Sora technically within six months, announced on Monday that it has raised RMB 100 million ($13.9 million) in a Series A1 financing round led by Shenzhen-based Fortune Venture Capital. According to AIsphere’s announcement on its WeChat account, the company, which is about to turn one year old in April, has launched a text-to-video model for the Chinese market on Monday, two months following its internationally-faced model PixVerse rolled out. PixVerse, which the company claimed is now “the largest China-grown GenAI product worldwide” with the largest number of users, is able to generate video lengths of about a few seconds. Local outlet Caixin cited the statistical website Similarweb, saying the tool surpassed one million visits in February. Founder Wang Changhu previously served as the head of ByteDance’s AI Lab, where he supported the building and development of widely-used video apps Douyin and TikTok “from zero to one,” the announcement said. [AIsphere, in Chinese]

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