Unique Research · Event signup · April 30, 2024
Background
At Baidu’s Create 2024 AI Developer Conference on April 16, founder, chairman, and CEO Robin Li (Li Yanhong) launched Season 2 of the Wenxin Cup (文心杯) startup contest. Winning teams can receive cash and resource investment worth up to ¥50M.
Create 2024’s theme was “Everyone is a developer”. Li: “AI is unleashing a creativity revolution; building an app will be as simple as shooting a short video — everyone a developer, everyone a creator.”
On Season 1 (launched May last year): nearly 1,000 teams applied; Baidu backed 15 winners with nearly ¥100M of investment plus ongoing tech, team, and resource support — aimed at AI-native apps and a livelier foundation-model ecosystem.
Two AI-application startups served by Unique Capital took third prize among those ~1,000 projects. Unique Capital followed Season 1 from recruiting through finals to resource delivery, and views Baidu as currently the strongest industrial investor supporting the AI application layer.
2024 is shaping up as the year of foundation-model landing and commercialization; younger founders keep emerging, and internationalization is a key AI-startup trend. Season 2 builds on Season 1 and upgrades further.
Contest details
Season 2 recruits globally. No limits on background, direction, or stage — as long as the venture is an AI-native application (vertical apps, agents, or any domain where foundation models solve problems and create value).
Support upgrades: richer strategic capital, business resources, and traffic exposure. First / second / third prize teams receive cash-and-resource packages valued at ¥10M / ¥5M / ¥2M respectively. A new Special Grand Prize can reach up to ¥50M in cash and resources.
Participants also get top-tier technical mentoring, ecosystem support, and access to a jury of Baidu AI leaders and top investors.
Registration
Signup channel appeared as an image/QR block in the original Chinese post; no registration URL was present in the extracted text — do not invent one. Refer to the CN article for the live channel.
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