Priya Patel
TLDR: Ant Group, the Chinese fintech giant affiliated with Alibaba, has established a new AI unit called NextEvo. The unit will be led by Xu Peng, a former engineer at Google, and will oversee Ant’s core AI efforts, including language models, natural language processing, and AI-generated content operations. Ant’s increased focus on AI comes as many Chinese tech companies are investing in large language models and exploring innovation in the field. The establishment of NextEvo follows Ant’s restructuring efforts after the cancellation of its dual listing in 2020. The company is now seeking a license from Chinese regulators to expand its credit business. Ant was one of the first Chinese tech companies to receive approval for consumer-facing products built on language models. NextEvo’s leader, Xu Peng, has extensive experience in AI, with a background in machine translation and advertising algorithms at Google.
