According to reports from Intelligent Emergence, recently, Hu Yunhua, a former researcher at Microsoft Research Asia, a senior technology expert at Alibaba Damo Academy, and the Chief Data Officer of Alipay China, has joined the large model unicorn Zhipu as the head of the C-end application "Zhipu Qingyan." Hu Yunhua's joining marks a new chapter for Zhipu in terms of product leadership.
It is known that Hu Yunhua has a very rich background. He started his internship at Microsoft Research Asia in 2003 and officially became a researcher in 2007. In 2012, he joined Alibaba Damo Academy, where he was known by the alias "Wu Gou." During his two years at Alibaba, he was responsible for building recommendation algorithms such as shopping intent mining and matching optimization, making him one of the most representative talents in Alibaba's recommendation algorithm team.
In 2014, Hu Yunhua left Alibaba and turned to the practice field of AI entrepreneurship. In 2016, he founded "Intelligent One," which secured four rounds of financing within a year, focusing primarily on AI shopping guide solutions for e-commerce.
Currently, Zhipu Qingyan has over 25 million users and is expected to generate annual revenue exceeding 10 million yuan. However, with many major companies entering the market and competition for dialogue tool products intensifying, Zhipu Qingyan's growth has surpassed the stage of acquiring users through new technology. The continuous integration of model functions is having a diminishing effect on expanding the user base and improving retention.
In this sense, Hu Yunhua's experience in large-scale technology research and AI entrepreneurship can meet Zhipu's expectations for a C-end product leader. Currently, the challenge for Hu Yunhua, the new product head, is how to effectively define products and continuously improve user scale and conversion rates.
According to statistics from AppGrowing, Kimi and Doubao, which have shown outstanding growth performance, have also invested heavily, with a total investment exceeding 400 million yuan from January to November 2024, nearly an order of magnitude higher than Zhipu Qingyan, which ranks sixth.
Hu Yunhua's joining may bring new changes and challenges. We will continue to monitor the development of Zhipu Qingyan and Hu Yunhua's performance.
