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ModelBest

AI · Haidian, China · Founded 2022

ModelBest is an artificial intelligence company established in August 2022. The founding team originates from the Natural Language Processing Laboratory at Tsinghua University. Co-founder Liu Zhiyuan has stated that the company has over 100 research and development personnel, with more than half being graduates from top Chinese universities like Tsinghua University and Peking University. Li Dahai serves as the company's CEO. ModelBest focuses on the development of large-scale AI models, particularly efficient, lightweight models for edge computing applications. The company's business model revolves around providing these AI solutions to various industries, accelerating their commercialization. Its client base includes leaders in sectors such as AI-powered phones and PCs, smart cockpits, smart homes, and embodied robotics. The company generates revenue by forming strategic partnerships with industry giants like Huawei, MediaTek, Lenovo, Intel, and Great Wall Motor to develop and implement its AI technologies. The company's flagship product series is the MiniCPM, a lightweight, open-source, edge-side model released in February 2024. MiniCPM is designed to be highly efficient and operate at a low cost, with parameters significantly smaller than larger models like GPT-4. It integrates capabilities such as unlimited text processing, optical character recognition (OCR), and real-time video understanding directly on edge devices. The MiniCPM series has gained significant traction in the open-source community, surpassing millions of downloads. In November 2023, the company also launched Luca, a multimodal large model service. ModelBest has successfully secured multiple rounds of financing, including an angel round in April 2023, and several subsequent rounds worth hundreds of millions of yuan each throughout 2024 and 2025 from prominent investors including Primavera Venture Partners, Huawei's investment arm Habo, and Zhihu. Keywords: large language models, edge AI, MiniCPM, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, model efficiency, edge computing, multimodal models, AI commercialization, open-source AI, intelligent cockpits, AI PC, AI phone, embodied robotics, computer vision, AI financing, Tsinghua University, Li Dahai, Liu Zhiyuan, Luca