Former Alibaba Star Researcher Starts New AI Lab, Seeks $2 Billion Valuation
Junyang Lin, former lead researcher of Alibaba’s Qwen models, is seeking to raise several hundred million dollars for his new AI lab, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The new AI lab will likely be valued at around $2 billion after the funding round, the people said, adding that the discussions are ongoing and the final valuation could change. Chinese venture capital firms Gaorong Ventures and HongShan are in talks to fund the lab, the people said.
A $2 billion valuation for a brand new AI lab is almost unheard of in China, where startups are typically valued far less than those in the U.S. The high target valuation for Lin’s new AI lab, whose name couldn’t immediately be learned, reflects his accomplishments at Alibaba and growing investor euphoria for AI stocks. Alibaba’s Qwen line of models are among the leaders in open-source AI models, and small-size versions of Qwen that are cheaper to operate are particularly popular among cost-conscious developers around the world.
Lin departed Alibaba in a rare public fall-out with the Chinese tech giant in early March. He broadcast his resignation in a post on the X social media site, before any official announcements were made by Alibaba’s executives. He has been widely credited with building a team of researchers and taking Qwen to the forefront of the global open-source AI in his three years at Alibaba.
Chinese large language model developers Zhipu and Minimax have seen their stock prices soar since they listed in Hong Kong early this year. DeepSeek, the best known Chinese AI lab overseas, is raising external funding for the first time and has increased its expected valuations several times as the talks progress.
In the U.S., a number of new research-focused AI startups founded by renowned former researchers from industry leaders have raised money at soaring valuations. Safe Superintelligence, co-founded by former OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, raised $1 billion at a $5 billion valuation in 2024 when the startup was just three months old. Similarly, Thinking Machines Lab, launched by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati last year, raised $2 billion in its first funding round at a $10 billion valuation.
But venture capitalists in China say new AI labs in the country, such as the one founded by Lin, could face more challenges and uncertainties than their U.S. counterparts. The high valuations of the U.S. AI startups are due in part to expectations that they could be eventually acquired by the biggest tech giants—but it remains uncertain if the same logic can apply to China, the venture capitalists said.
Any new AI labs in China also face the overarching challenges of securing sufficient compute, given U.S. controls on exports of advanced AI chips to China. On top of that, they will have to carve out research paths that don’t completely overlap with existing tech giants such as Alibaba and ByteDance.
Lin’s abrupt resignation announcement came days after Alibaba unveiled Qwen3.5, its new-generation AI models at the time. The departure of Lin, known in the industry for his dedication to open-source technology, was followed by a strategic shift at Alibaba toward offering more of its new AI models as proprietary products that can lead to more revenue.
After Lin left, Alibaba announced a major restructuring, consolidating the Qwen research team and other key AI-related businesses under one new division managed directly by the company’s CEO.