01.AI

01.AI is a Chinese large-model company founded in March 2023 by Kai-Fu Lee, the former Google and Microsoft executive who also founded Sinovation Ventures. Based in Beijing, it built the open-weight Yi model family, including the Yi-34B base model and the later Yi-Lightning model. In early 2025 the company pivoted away from pre-training its own largest models, forming a joint lab with Alibaba and shifting toward selling tailored AI business solutions, including ones built on third-party models. It reached unicorn status (a valuation above $1B) within months of launching in 2023.