Unique Research · Insight / Industry report · July 19, 2024
Full Unique Research half-year report spanning H1 AI news, financing, product traffic, and China LLM tender intel. Charts/boards: see CN images (74).
Executive snapshot
- Global AIGC financing H1 2024: ¥138.4B across 363 deals; +23.3% YoY dollars (2023 H1 ¥112.3B) and +307.9% deal count (89 → 363).
- China LLM tenders: 207 wins H1; June alone 74 (+80% MoM).
- Global AIGC web visits: 5.972B (Jan) → 8.786B (Jun), +47.1%; time-on-AI-products 788M hrs → 1.041B hrs (+32.1%).
- AI apps: ~400M average monthly downloads; ~1.8B hrs average monthly time spent.
- ChatGPT: June unique visitors 311M (crossed 300M).
01. H1 headlines
1.1 International giants
Nvidia (Jun 18 close): $135.58, +3.51%; market cap $3.335T — briefly world’s most valuable listed co., ahead of MSFT/AAPL. Path $2T→$3T in 96 days (vs MSFT 945 / AAPL 1,044). FY2025 Q1: data-center revenue $22.6B (+427% YoY); total revenue $26.04B (+262%); net income $14.88B (>6×).
Microsoft multi-country AI bet: UK AI hub (Jordan Hoffman) + £2.5B over 3 years (Apr 7); Japan $2.9B + OpenAI/ChatGPT tech + robotics (Apr 9; Japan GenAI market ~¥30T by 2030); Indonesia $1.7B over 4 years + AI skills for 840k people (Apr 30; AI ~$366B to economy by 2030); France €4B incl. Mulhouse data center (May 13; Brad Smith).
Amazon → Anthropic: +$2.75B (Mar 28) completing $4B commitment; AWS Trainium/Inferentia; Bedrock; safety focus. Prior $1.25B minority stake.
AWS Singapore: $9B over 4 years (doubling Singapore spend); ~$35B non-U.S. investment this year (Japan, Saudi, Mexico, Singapore).
Samsung AGI Computing Lab (U.S./Korea; Kyung Kye-Hyun, Mar 19) — LLM inference/serving chips, low power/cost iteration.
Meta — own 5nm AI chip via TSMC (>2× compute & memory bandwidth); ~$35B AI infra; hundreds of thousands of H100s.
ByteDance — ~MYR 10B (~$2.13B) Malaysia regional AI center + MYR 1.5B Johor DC expansion (minister Zafrul, Jun 7).
SoftBank — first FX bond since 2021, ~$1.86B (USD + EUR tranches); Son: “all-in on AI.”
SK Group / SK hynix — ~KRW 103T (~$74.8B) through 2028 into AI & chips; KRW 80T secured by 2026; streamline 175+ subsidiaries.
1.2 Policy
Saudi Arabia — ~$40B AI fund (startups, chips, DCs); PIF talks with a16z (NYT Mar 19); Al-Rumayyan: ready to be a global AI hub.
EU AI Act — passed May 21; in force 20 days after publication; risk-tiered; fines up to 7% global turnover or €35M; extraterritorial; top bans expected by end-2024.
1.3 OpenAI
Sora (Feb 16) — text-to-video up to 60s; camera moves; image/video edit. Altman steps off OpenAI Startup Fund control (SEC; Ian Hathaway GP; fund ~$175M incl. Microsoft). GPT-4o free to public. Cathie Wood’s ARK Venture Fund disclosed OpenAI position from Apr 10, 2024 (“Cambrian explosion” framing).
1.4 China
Apple AI exploring China partners (Baidu, Alibaba, Baichuan contacts). ByteDance Doubao models + Volcano Engine 2.0. Baichuan 4. China mega semiconductor fund ~$47.5B. Saudi Aramco ~$400M into Zhipu AI. Kunlun Wanwei open-sources Skywork-MoE. OpenAI API access limits from unsupported regions from Jul 9.
02. Financing overview
H1 global AIGC: ¥138.4B / 363 deals. Largest H1 raise: xAI $6B Series B (May 26; pre $18B / post $24B; a16z, Sequoia et al.). China dollars leader: Moonshot >$1B (Feb; Alibaba, Sequoia China, Xiaohongshu, Meituan, Lisi; post ~$2.5B).
Cumulative strategic (2022–Jun 2024): Microsoft ¥72.8B; Amazon ¥28.8B; Google ¥18.3B; Alibaba ¥12.9B; Nvidia ¥3.4B; Tencent ¥2.7B. Model unicorns (valuation): OpenAI $80B; xAI $24B; Anthropic $16.1B; China names in top nine include Zhipu, Moonshot, MiniMax.
Country cumulative AI financing (same window): U.S. ¥262.8B; China ¥59.8B; France ¥14.9B; UK ¥8.0B; Canada ¥7.5B; Israel ¥5.6B; Germany ¥4.4B; India ¥2.7B; Korea ¥2.3B; others ¥2.4B. Company raise leaders: OpenAI ¥71.3B; Anthropic ¥54.7B; xAI ¥45.4B; Inflection ¥10.8B; Mistral ¥10.2B; MosaicML ¥9.3B; Moonshot ¥7.2B; MiniMax ¥6.2B; Zhipu ¥4.9B; Casetext ¥4.7B.
Stack mix (global): model 68.18% (¥218.9B); apps 19.84% (¥63.7B); mid 6.07%; base 5.9%. Overseas model 70.6%. China: model 55.15% (¥27.7B); apps 27.05%; base 14.96%; mid 2.84%. China apps: general enterprise 29.31%; vertical enterprise 28.01%; productivity 24.34%; consumer 18.34%.
H1 2024 geo: U.S. ¥88.088B / 114 deals; China ¥22.08B / 170 deals (deal-count lead). France jumped to #3 on ~¥5.83B (Mistral + H/Holistic in May). Canada ¥6.36B (7); Germany ¥3.72B (8); UK ¥3.56B (18). Q2 deal count 218 (+230% YoY). Monthly mean dollars ~¥23.07B; per-deal means Jan–Jun: ¥0.13 / 0.55 / 0.72 / 0.07 / 0.18 / 0.38B.
China active investors: MiraclePlus 13; Alibaba 4 (~¥9B estimated deploy); eight firms at 3 each (Zhipu AI, Baidu Ventures, Ameba, Shengjing, GSR, Shunxi, Jiangmen, iFlytek). 157 China AIGC companies financed; 33 >¥100M. Moonshot $1B #1; MiniMax $600M; Zhipu $400M (Prosperity7, Jun). China monthly mean ¥3.68B; Feb ¥8.249B on Moonshot.
Overseas active: Lux / Lightspeed / a16z 6 each; NEA / Khosla / GC / Index 5; Sequoia / Nvidia GPU Ventures / Daniel Gross / Coatue 4. Individuals 20 deals. Dollars: Amazon ~¥19.8B; a16z ~¥7.2B; Sequoia ~¥6.3B. 19 overseas firms ≥¥1B (vs 9 in 2023). Overseas AIGC H1 ~¥116.3B (+10% vs ¥104.7B). Leaders: xAI ¥42.65B; Anthropic ¥21.51B; Mistral ¥7.27B. May overseas month ~¥55.1B on mega model rounds.
Secondary (East Money, Jun 28): AIGC concept index 1,139.56 (−25.34% MoM); turnover ¥3.95T; turnover rate 319.72%. Top gainers cited: Annoqi, Huichen, Huashe, Insight Group, Unisplendour — company blurbs in CN.
03. Product traffic (June focus)
Chatbots led global web growth (visits ~2× in H1). June web Top50 spans 25 categories; chatbots, smart search, graphic design most visited. ChatGPT web visits record 2.859B (+360M MoM). Bing & Canva #2/#3 despite soft MoM. Top50 floor 14M visits (#50 Cutout Pro / LibAI). China names on global board include Kimi and Baidu Netdisk / Wenku / Translate. Luma AI +1220% MoM (video→3D). Companion apps JanitorAI +43.54%, candy.ai +26.16%, Character.AI +12.06%.
Web MAU: ChatGPT 311M; Bing 146M; Canva 122M (only three >100M). Session length: companion apps top five; all >15 min (yodayo 20.10; Janitor 17.99; CrushOn.AI 16.25).
App downloads (iOS+Android): CapCut/Jianying 38.49M; Doubao 26.18M; ChatGPT 24.61M; Top50 floor 1.53M (#50 Retake). Character.AI downloads +79.24%; Linky (Kunlun Skywork) +58.05%; Nova +40.45%; Bing +40.31%; Tiangong AI largest drop after prior-month relaunch hype.
App MAU: CapCut 322M; Google Translate 221M; ChatGPT 162M; Meitu 103M. Sessions: CapCut 8.205B; Translate 6.622B; Character.AI 4.101B despite only 17M MAU. App revenue (ex-ads): Duolingo $32.24M; ChatGPT $24.18M; Canva $21.95M; CapCut $20.64M; Baidu Netdisk $11.36M; Top50 floor $650k (#50 Filmore).
China web: Baidu Netdisk 137M visits; Translate 49.13M; Wenku 36.09M; 4 of top 5 Baidu-family. Tencent Yuanbao +1054% MoM; Jimeng AI +376%. Web MAU: Netdisk 41.98M; Wenku 15.82M; Translate 14.74M. Time: Netdisk 9.15M hrs; Translate 4.81M; Kimi 1.14M; liblib.art 470k hrs among model/search peers.
China apps: CapCut 38.49M DL; Doubao 26.18M; Meitu 5.05M; floor 120k. Yuanbao app DL +277.73%; Duxiang +103.5%; University Search Sauce +52.94%. MAU: CapCut 322M; Meitu 103M; Baidu Netdisk 51.51M; Doubao 27.52M. Xingye: 2.64M DLs but 400M uses (~151/user).
China outbound web: CapCut overseas 40.15M; CrushOn.AI 17.60M; yodayo 15.55M; Fotor 14.20M; Cutout Pro 14.08M. Vivago +342% (Sora-class video). Categories: image/design 34.3%; A/V 27.75%; games/entertainment 10.65%; office tools 14.16%. Outbound MAU: CapCut 21.4M; Fotor 9.07M; Cutout Pro 6.21M (500k+ = head; 100k+ competitive).
04. China LLM tenders
H1 207 disclosed wins. By count: China Telecom 16; iFlytek & China Mobile 10 each; Baidu 9. Cumulative amount: Yunshang Kunpeng ¥177M #1 (incl. East-Data-West-Compute Gui’an LLM build Phase I ~¥177M); China Mobile ¥92.67M; Donghua Soft ¥61.04M. Average-amount leaders are single large wins (Yunshang Kunpeng, Donghua, Zipeng Network ¥21.86M for Henan industrial internet).
Monthly wins peak June 74 (+428.57% YoY); February low 9 (Spring Festival). March cumulative amount peak ¥240M (30 wins; largest single ¥177M). March average win ¥13.42M (iFlytek ¥27.05M salt-alkali rice cognitive model; Baidu ¥11.79M traffic LLM AI platform).
Buyer type: SOEs 126 (+110% vs full-year 2023); government/institutions 70 (mostly universities); private 11 (doubled). SOE cumulative ¥370M; gov/institutions ¥100M; private ¥95M despite only 11 buyers. Private average ¥11.9M; gov/institutions ¥1.86M across 101; SOE average ¥8.47M.
Region: Beijing 46 wins (>20%, +40% vs 2023 full year); Guangdong 23; Shanghai 22. Cumulative amount: Guizhou ¥178M #1 (EDWC node); Sichuan ¥64M. Guizhou average ~¥89M; Hunan/Hainan/Sichuan/Henan also >¥10M averages.
Industry: operators 60 wins (+71% vs 2023 full year); universities 48 (= full 2023); finance 23 (+130%). Finance cumulative amount ¥186M #1; operators ¥105M. Finance & real estate average wins >¥10M (finance ¥17M; real estate ¥14M, Hainan SOEs).
05. Unique Research views
- Of six global VC rounds >$1B in H1, five went to AI startups.
- Hot money still flows from cloud-era winners; SoftBank/Japan is chasing GenAI hard; Saudi and Chinese state/enterprise capital are on the global stage.
- U.S.–China gap remains large: overseas AI ~¥116.3B / 193 deals vs China AIGC ~¥22.1B / 170; U.S. had 28 AI companies raising ≥$100M; ~64% of all ≥$100M AI mega-rounds went to U.S. startups.
- Outside ChatGPT, still no clear global killer app; high model costs need applications that justify them.
- Star companies under stress: Ilya Sutskever’s AI-safety startup after OpenAI; Stability AI founder/core exits + >$30M first-quarter loss and heavy debt; Character.AI financing trouble / possible IP-for-compute deals with Google or Meta.
- Retail giants adopting: Coca-Cola–Microsoft ~$1.1B cloud/AI; LVMH–Alibaba China retail AI; L’Oréal, Walmart, Lululemon also active.
- China LLM tenders: SOEs >60% of buyers (126) vs 11 private — SOEs still dominate domestic model adoption spend.
06. Statements
Financing analysis from Xiniu Data; seed merged with angel where thin. Lead-investor deploy estimated at 50% of round; non-leads at round average. Traffic covers sites/apps on PC/tablet/phone with >10k monthly visits — not browser extensions, desktop software, mini-programs, Discord, or local open-source. FX: pre-2023 at Dec 31, 2022 rate; thereafter at deal-day monthly rates. Reference only; not investment advice.
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