Hu Yunhua, a veteran from Microsoft and Alibaba, joins Zhipu and takes the position as the person in charge of "Zhipu Qingyan".

The growth of Zhipu Qingyan has passed the stage of acquiring customers driven by new technologies. The C-end product requires a professional team leader.

Written by Zhou Xinyu

Edited by Su Jianxun

"Intelligent Emergence" exclusively learned that Hu Yunhua, a former researcher at Microsoft Research Asia, a senior technical expert at Alibaba DAMO Academy, and the Chief Data Officer of Alipay China, has joined the large model unicorn Zhipu, serving as the person in charge of the C-end application "Zhipu Qingyan".

Previously, he founded the AI company "Smartdot" in 2016, with its business focused on the conversational intelligent marketing system.

Regarding the above information, as of the time of publication, Zhipu has not responded.

As an Internet technology backbone and an AI entrepreneurship veteran, Hu Yunhua possesses the typical labels required for management talents in the current AI era.

△Hu Yunhua. Source: Internet

In 2003, Hu Yunhua entered Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), known as the "Huangpu Military Academy of AI in China", for an internship, and officially became a researcher in 2007. In 2012, Hu Yunhua joined another major base of AI talents in China - the Alibaba Mom's recommendation algorithm team, with the nickname "Wu Gou".

During his two years at Alibaba, Hu Yunhua was responsible for building recommendation algorithms such as shopping intention mining and matching optimization, and was one of the most representative talents in the Alibaba Mom's recommendation algorithm team.

In 2014, he left Alibaba. Then, Hu Yunhua shifted from the laboratories of large companies to the practice field of AI entrepreneurship. Two years later, AlphaGO defeated Lee Sedol, setting off the first wave of the AI entrepreneurship trend.

Hu Yunhua also got involved - after a short attempt at children's robot entrepreneurship, in November 2016, he founded "Smartdot". Within more than a year, it received four rounds of financing, mainly focusing on e-commerce artificial intelligence shopping guide solutions, such as pre-sale intelligent customer service. In 2021, Hu Yunhua returned to Alibaba to serve as a senior technical expert at DAMO Academy.

From the two entrepreneurial experiences, Hu Yunhua's previous experience has hit several of the hottest trends currently: smart hardware and conversation systems.

Back to the current Zhipu Qingyan. According to "Intelligent Emergence", the previous person in charge of Zhipu Qingyan had a strong technical background, which enabled Zhipu Qingyan to quickly integrate model functions. For example, video generation, video calls, and emotional voice functions. Currently, Zhipu Qingyan has more than 25 million users and an expected annual income of more than ten million yuan.

However, as multiple large companies enter the market and the competition in conversation tool products intensifies, the growth of Zhipu Qingyan has passed the stage of acquiring customers driven by new technologies. The effect of continuously integrating model functions on expanding the user scale and improving retention is decreasing.

Data shows that whether on the PC side or the mobile side, ByteDance's "Doubao", which started later, has become the top 1 in conversation applications; Kimi remains at the top of products of start-up companies with significant growth.

In contrast, since February 2024, the growth of Zhipu Qingyan on the App side has slowed down. On the PC side, according to Similarweb data, even though the PC-side visits of Zhipu Qingyan rank second among the "Six Tigers", it is ten million times behind the first-place Kimi.

△The number of monthly independent devices of mainstream language model apps from January to August 2024. Source: iResearch

△The PC-side reading visits (in ten thousand times) of AI products from January to June 2024. Data source: Similarweb

Just as the three words "long text" became the starting point for Kimi to become popular, the ability to define and polish the category has become the key to building product barriers at present.

At the same time, the insight and judgment of marketing trends and market hotspots are also necessary qualities for product managers. According to AppGrowing statistics, Kimi and Doubao, which have outstanding growth performance, have also made great efforts in marketing. The total investment from January to November 2024 exceeded 400 million yuan, which is nearly an order of magnitude higher than that of Zhipu Qingyan, which ranks sixth.

In this sense, Hu Yunhua's resume of large company technology research and development and AI entrepreneurship can meet Zhipu's expectations for the person in charge of the C-end product. Currently, how to define the product well, continuously increase the user scale and paid conversion is the test that Hu Yunhua, the new product leader, is facing.

Welcome to communicate!

Welcome to follow!

This article is originally produced by「周鑫雨」， For reprint or content cooperation, please click Reprint Instructions ；Unauthorized reprint will be held accountable.

Hu Yunhua, a veteran from Microsoft and Alibaba, joins Zhipu and takes the position as the person in charge of "Zhipu Qingyan". | Exclusive from 36Kr.