Today AI said it has raised more than $200 million in total. The company was founded by Qi Junyuan, the founder of Teambition and former head of Doubao's PC business.
The investors it named are IDG Capital, Tencent, 5Y Capital, Ant Group, Sequoia China, Transsion, Tongge Venture Capital and Shanghai Jiao Tong University Hanyuan Asset.
Product and model work are now moving in parallel
Today had originally planned to build software first, then develop hardware, and train its own model later. That order has now changed. The company said software and model development are being pushed forward at the same time, and an early experimental version of its model already exists.
It said the shift came as existing large models have become stronger at programming, while their ability to communicate naturally with users and understand individual preferences has not improved at the same pace. Today wants to train a model designed for personal assistant scenarios. Its hardware plans will be pursued with partners.
The product still falls short of the team's target
Even so, Today said the current product remains short of the team's vision for a personal AI assistant.
In an earlier interview with LatePost, the team said the system's ability to proactively understand and adapt to users is still only at 「20 or 30 points」. A 10-day trial by GeekPark also found that Today could finish Chinese localization for a game mod in 15 minutes, but repeated wrong installation advice left the reporter spending another hour trying to get it working.
Questions such as how to judge task priority and when to act on its own remain unresolved for personal agent products of this kind.