Cost to Develop a Messaging App like Telegram
How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Messaging App like Telegram?
Why You Should Develop A Chat App Like Telegram/WhatsApp?
Mobile messaging apps are ruling the online communication industry. In this digital space, online communication has become extremely predominant for personal and professional chats. Online messaging apps for Android and iPhone are allowing people to chat at any time from anywhere over a secured network.
Besides personal chats, mobile messaging applications are now essential assets for enterprises too for safe and encrypted real-time communications with their on-site and remote working employees. Individuals or enterprises can share audio, videos, text messages, voice messages, and documents to a person or a group instantly right from their messaging app.
Cloud-based messaging apps like Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat with their bunch of user-friendly online messaging apps are dominating the industry. Not only for online chatting, these apps were being used for making domestic and international calls at free of cost. Millions and billions of people are accessing these apps monthly.
It is the right time to hold the market opportunity for online messaging app development like Telegram and WhatsApp. Driven by the increasing user download rate of Instant messaging apps, the development of online chatting apps would be the best decision to attain market attention and a vast user base.
Want to build a messaging app like Telegram or WhatsApp?
This article would be a guide for enterprises who are looking to develop Telegram-like global leading mobile messenger app. Let’s look at the functionalities of the Telegram application.
What and Why Is Telegram For?
Telegram is an instant messaging app and has got a place in the list of the top 10 most downloaded apps in the world. With a primary focus on speed, privacy, and security, this top mobile and desktop messaging app has launched into the market in 2013.
This cloud-based and secured online chatting application is best suitable for chatting, video calling, and document sharing over a safe and highly-encrypted network. Along with a secure private messaging facility, its potential to hold a group chat with up to 200,000 members is one of the big reasons behind its popularity.
Further, the other significant feature of the Telegram-like instant chat app is its customization and chat synchronization. Users can completely customize their application appearance as per their preferences and also can access the ongoing chats from multiple devices effortlessly.
Currently, the application has reported over 1 billion downloads and has approximately 700 million monthly active users. Here is the key information about the Telegram app.
- Application available: Android, iOS/iPhone, Mobile web, Windows, macOS, Linux
- Released On: 2013
- Available in: 12 languages
- 1,000,000,000+ downloads
- Developer: Telegram FZ LLC and Telegram Messenger Inc.
Know about the must-have features and development costs and be ready confidently to create instant messaging apps like Telegram.
Must-Have Features Of Instant Messaging App Like Telegram/WhatsApp
With over 700 million monthly active users, Telegram has become one of the top-rated messaging service apps. Can you guess what might be the reason behind such wide adoption of this popular messaging app? The answer is its features and functionalities.
Yes, the most beneficial features of trending messaging apps are giving a big success to the application. Here are the features of Telegram-the most popular mobile messenger app worldwide that you must consider during its clone app development.
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Hassle-free Registration & Login
App registration and login are the initial steps to access the app’s features. Telegram-like famous chat app allows users to access the application through OTP verification of their mobile numbers. It’s simple and easy login procedure is a reason for a higher user retention rate. Further, by offering multiple login methods to access the app’s features, you can increase the user experience.
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Instant Messaging
A chat app like WhatsApp or Telegram should allow users to send voice or text messages to their contacts or groups instantly with simple taps. Simple messaging option in chat apps will optimize the app performance and provides online chatting access to the users.
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Audio/Video Calling
It is one of the significant features that must be added in mobile chat apps like WhatsApp or Telegram to attract users. Enabling uninterrupted and free audio or video calling feature right from the application will make your app versatile and meets the diversified needs of app users. Making unlimited audio or video calls to persons or groups free of cost is truly a unique addition and optimizes the app’s quality.
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Instant Sharing Facility
WhatsApp or Telegram like popular online messaging applications for Android and iOS are offering instant sharing of documents, location details, contact details, photos, videos, animated stickers and emojis, and other media content with no restrictions on size. Hence, besides of general chatting feature, add a multi-media sharing facility for enriching the application’s functionality and users’ comfort.
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In-app Camera
Integration of this feature helps users to take instant photos of their choice and send them to a person or drop it in a group chat. In addition, don’t forget to integrate photo editing tools to help users in editing their images. It will add a little crunchy entertainment to app users and optimize their interest in using the application.
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Simple SYNCED
It’s a unique feature of a telegram-like trending instant messaging app that allows users to access their chats on multiple devices (phones, tablets, and computers) at a time by clicking on the automatic synchronization feature.
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High-security
Providing high-level privacy and security to the chats is one of the top-most requirements of instant messaging app development. Hence, while developing Telegram or WhatsApp clone apps make sure to keep the user’s chat secure from unauthorized access.
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User Profile
It’s a general feature of any mobile application. It helps users to view/edit their profile images. Users can also customize their privacy and security features at their convenience.
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Chat Notifications
Chat notifications feature plays an essential role in notifying users upon receiving any message or content from their contacts or groups. Users can toggle the notifications feature on or off as per their interests.
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Smart search
Make sure to add a search feature in WhatsApp or Telegram clone app development. This feature allows users to search for contacts or groups and send instant text or media content on the go. It will save the users time and enhance their experience.
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Two-step authentication
It’s purely to provide high-level security to the user’s accounts. Along with the log-in procedure, the two-step verification process validates the user’s identity by sending an OTP to the registered accounts. Hence, it prevents unauthorized access and provides 1005 privacy and security to the conversations.
These are few top features that must-add to Telegram or WhatsApp clone app development. Hire #top mobile app developers who have proven experience in the design and development of features-rich Telegram/WhatsApp-like instant messaging apps development.
How Much Does It Cost To Build A Chat App Like Telegram or WhatsApp?
If you have plans of creating a chat app or audio/video calling app like Telegram or WhatsApp, you might be eager to know how much it cost to make a chat app like Telegram/WhatsApp. However, estimating the final cost of chat app development will depend on many factors. Here are a few significant factors that affect the mobile app development cost:
- App features
- App integrations
- Mobile app development technologies
- App development platforms
- Complexity of app design
- Mobile app development company’s location and team size
- Top app developers hourly rate
Among these cost-impacting factors, the hourly cost of the custom mobile app developers you hire will decide the final cost of the software development. Considering all the above facts, the estimated cost of Telegram or WhatsApp like online messaging app development might range from $25,000 to $40,000.
Being one of the most trusted and top mobile application development companies (USA), USM offers the best economical quote for developing your chat app will all the features you require.
Final Words!
Telegram or WhatsApp or Snapchat-like instant messaging app development is beneficial as the usage of online chat apps is increasing worldwide. For personal communication with friends or family members and business communications with employees or clients, instant messaging apps are the first choice of people. Hence, investments in messaging applications (Android/iPhone/Web) offer companies incredible business opportunities.
[contact-form-7]“Tweaked” AI Writing Can Now Be Copyrighted
In a far-reaching decision, the U.S. Copyright Office has ruled that AI-generated content — modified by humans — can now be copyrighted.
The move has incredibly positive ramifications for writers who polish output from ChatGPT and similar AI to create blog posts, articles, books, poetry and more.
Observes writer Jacqueline So: “The U.S. Copyright Office processes approximately 500,000 copyright applications each year, with an increasing number being requests to copyright AI-generated works.”
“Most copyright decisions are made on a case-to-case basis.”
In other news and analysis on AI writing:
*ChatGPT’s Online Editor Gets an Upgrade: Released just a few months ago, ChatGPT’s online editor ‘Canvas’ just got a performance boost.
The tool — great for polishing-up text created with ChatGPT — now runs on ChatGPT-o1, an AI engine that has been hailed for its advanced reasoning capabilities.
Observes writer Eric Hal Schwartz: “You can enable the o1 model in Canvas by selecting it from the model picker or typing the command: /canvas.”
For a comprehensive tour of ChatGPT’s editor, check out: “Ultimate Guide: New ChatGPT Editor, Canvas.”
*The DeepSeek Fallout: Dirt-Cheap AI Ahead for Writers: After roiling the stock market last week by proving that AI nearly as good as the most advanced version of ChatGPT can be produced for pennies-on-the-dollar, one thing is certain: Writers have extremely cheap — and extremely powerful — AI in their future.
The reason: The programmers behind the DeepSeek chatbot appear to have demonstrated that by punching-up the code running AI, they could create a chatbot competitive to ChatGPT by using computer chips that only cost a fraction of the chips needed to create ChatGPT.
Observes lead writer Cade Metz: DeepSeek said “it built its new AI technology more cost-effectively and with fewer hard-to-get computer chips than its American competitors — shocking an industry that had come to believe that bigger and better AI would cost billions and billions of dollars.”
*AI for Writers Summit Slated for March 6: If you’re looking for a quick study on the future of AI for writers, put this upcoming virtual meeting on your calendar.
Hosted by the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, the event promises to offer writers AI how-tos on:
~Responsibly transforming your storytelling with speed and precision
~Enhancing productivity without sacrificing creativity
~Building strategies that future-proof your career or content team
Bonus: Agree to give-up your contact information and you get in free.
*Writers in Government Can Now Use ChatGPT Safely: Wordsmiths in government gun-shy about using ChatGPT due to data privacy concerns need fret no more.
ChatGPT’s maker OpenAI has just released a new version of its AI — dubbed ChatGPT Gov — specially designed to comply with strict government regulations regarding data safety and privacy.
Observes writer Geoff Harris: “Dr. Rob McDole — the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University — tells us that the main difference between ChatGPT Gov and ChatGPT Enterprise is that agencies will be able to use it in their own Microsoft Azure Cloud.
“So the data is highly protected because it is all sitting inside Microsoft servers,” McDole says.
*Another ChatGPT Researcher Quits Over Safety Concerns: Add Steven Adler, a former safety officer at OpenAI, to the growing list of researchers who have quit the ChatGPT-maker over safety concerns.
Says Adler: “Honestly, I’m pretty terrified by the pace of AI development these days,” he said.
“When I think about where I’ll raise a future family, or how much to save for retirement, I can’t help but wonder: Will humanity even make it to that point?”
*Love at First Price Cut: Many U.S. Businesses Already Gaga Over DeepSeek: The Wall Street Journal reports that more than a few businesses are already gaga over the possibility that DeepSeek’s dirt-cheap AI could dramatically reduce costs for the tech.
Observes Marc Kermisch, chief technology officer, Emergent Software: “What is exciting to me is having additional competition in this space and frankly having them shoot an arrow across the bow of the Big Tech firms.
“I would have to assume we’ll see some pricing pressure on the U.S. market.”
*Google Hedges Bets With Another $1 Billion Investment in ChatGPT-Competitor Anthropic: When you’re as deep-pocketed as Google, you have the luxury of investing in companies that compete directly with you — and with your chief competitors.
Witness the tech Goliath’s decision to invest $1 billion more in Anthropic — a feisty start-up that competes with Google’s own AI chatbot Gemini, as well as with ChatGPT.
Observes writer Rachel Metz: “The new funding comes in addition to more than $2 billion that Google has already invested in Anthropic.”
*Google Workspace Users Get AI Upgrade for Two-Bucks-a-Month: Determined to fully integrate at least some form of AI throughout its ecosystem at minimal cost, Google has upgraded its Workspace Business and Workspace Enterprise suites with an AI assistant for a nominal cost of $2/month.
One caveat: Before paying for either suite, be sure to test the AI assistant against Google Gemini — the most advanced form of chatbot AI that’s available from Google.
Essentially: You should be entirely convinced that the in-suite AI assistant will fulfill every skill currently available with Google Gemini — at the sophistication level Google Gemini performs that skill.
*AI Big Picture: The DeepSeek Phenomenon, Fully Analyzed: If you’re looking for a comprehensive look at the full implications of DeepSeek and the future of AI, check-out this 30-minute video.
The dirt-cheap AI roiled stock markets last week by apparently showing that AI competitive to ChatGPT could be created for pennies-on-the-dollar.
Programmers behind the DeepSeek chatbot appear to have demonstrated that by punching-up the code running AI, they were able to create a chatbot competitive to ChatGPT using computer chips that only cost a fraction of the computer chips needed to create ChatGPT.
Hosted by Deirdra Bos, CNBC’s TechCheck anchor and featuring Silicon Valley insider Chetan Puttagunta, general partner, Benchmark — a venture capital firm — the video turns over virtually every rock in the DeepSeek story.
Bottom line: A great place to click for the complete rundown.

Share a Link: Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.
–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.
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Samsung Galaxy G Fold: The Tri-Fold Revolution Poised to Challenge Huawei’s Mate XT
The Rise of Tri-Fold Smartphones Samsung’s foldable lineup has long dominated the market, but the sudden arrival of Huawei’s Mate XT changed the game. The Mate XT, the world’s first commercially available tri-fold smartphone, showcased the immense potential of this evolving form factor. Now, with rumors swirling around the highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy G Fold,...
The post Samsung Galaxy G Fold: The Tri-Fold Revolution Poised to Challenge Huawei’s Mate XT appeared first on 1redDrop.
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Tragedy in Philadelphia: Medical Plane Crash Leaves Six Feared Dead
Devastating Plane Crash Rocks Northeast Philadelphia A tragic aviation disaster struck Northeast Philadelphia on Friday evening, as a Learjet 55 medical transport plane crashed near a bustling shopping center. The aircraft, carrying a pediatric patient, her mother, two pilots, a doctor, and a paramedic, plummeted shortly after takeoff, resulting in a catastrophic explosion that ignited...
The post Tragedy in Philadelphia: Medical Plane Crash Leaves Six Feared Dead appeared first on 1redDrop.
The Transformative Role of AI in Cybersecurity
2025 marks a pivotal moment in the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity. Rapid advancements in AI are not only redefining industries; they are reshaping the cybersecurity landscape in profound ways. Through this evolution, I have noted three primary […]
The post The Transformative Role of AI in Cybersecurity appeared first on TechSpective.
Beyond DeepSeek: An Overview of Chinese AI Tigers and Their Cutting-Edge Innovations
The recent disruption caused by DeepSeek’s R1 model sent shockwaves through the AI community, demonstrating that Chinese AI advancements may have been underestimated. The model’s performance, rivaling some of the most advanced offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic at a fraction of the cost, signaled a new era of competition in artificial intelligence.
However, DeepSeek is not the only Chinese company making waves in AI. While industry giants like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and ByteDance continue to lead the charge, a new generation of AI startups – often referred to as the “Chinese AI Tigers” – is emerging as formidable players. These startups are pushing the limits of generative AI, challenging global incumbents with state-of-the-art models and breakthrough innovations.
In this article, we will explore DeepSeek and five of the most influential Chinese AI startups: Moonshot AI, Zhipu AI, Baichuan AI, MiniMax, and 01.AI. Each of these companies has developed cutting-edge AI models and solutions that are shaping the future of artificial intelligence, both in China and beyond.
DeepSeek: A Research-Driven AI Powerhouse in China
Founded in May 2023, DeepSeek is an AI company based in Hangzhou, operating as an independent entity under High-Flyer, a leading Chinese quantitative hedge fund. Unlike many AI startups chasing commercialization, DeepSeek prioritizes technical innovation, running more like a research lab than a traditional business. The company is focused on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) through breakthroughs in mathematics, coding, and multimodal AI capabilities.
Technical Innovation & Model Efficiency
DeepSeek has distinguished itself through cost-effective AI solutions and pioneering architectural advancements. Its research efforts have led to the deployment of novel techniques, including Multi-Head Latent Attention (MLA), sparse Mixture-of-Experts (MoE), and FP8 mixed precision training. These innovations significantly reduce memory requirements and computational costs, allowing DeepSeek to achieve state-of-the-art performance with fewer resources than industry giants like OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic.
DeepSeek V3, its most advanced model, boasts 671B parameters and was trained in just 55 days at a cost of $5.58 million – an order of magnitude more efficient than its Western counterparts. The company has also committed to open-source development, furthering its influence in the AI research community.
Product Lineup
- DeepSeek-V2 (May 2024): Introduced the MLA architecture, reducing inference costs and intensifying competition in China’s AI market.
- DeepSeek-V3 (December 2024): A 671B-parameter model trained in record time, outperforming Llama 3.1 and Qwen 2.5 while matching GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
- DeepSeek-R1 (January 2025): A reasoning model based on DeepSeek-V3 that rivals OpenAI’s o1 in mathematics and coding benchmarks. Open-sourced and free for commercial use, it delivers performance comparable to GPT models at just 3% of the cost.
- Janus-Pro-7B (January 2025): A vision model capable of understanding and generating images from text prompts, outperforming OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion 3 in multiple image generation benchmarks.
- Distilled Models: Optimized smaller-scale versions that retain high efficiency and strong performance.
Leadership & Talent Strategy
DeepSeek is led by CEO Liang Wenfeng, a former AI researcher and founder of High-Flyer Quant. Known for his technical idealism and open-source advocacy, Liang believes AGI could be achieved within the next decade. The company’s talent acquisition strategy is unconventional, focusing on hiring fresh graduates and early-career researchers driven by curiosity rather than experience. This approach fosters a culture of bottom-up innovation, with flexible resource allocation to encourage groundbreaking research.
Funding & Business Model
Unlike many AI startups dependent on external venture capital, DeepSeek is entirely funded by High-Flyer Quant. The hedge fund’s strategic investment in over 10,000 GPUs before U.S. sanctions has provided DeepSeek with a significant computational advantage.
While primarily research-driven, DeepSeek has achieved profitability through API revenue. Its aggressive pricing – offering API access at just 1/53rd the cost of Claude 3.5 Sonnet – has triggered a price war in the AI industry, challenging established players.
Outlook
DeepSeek’s chatbot technology demonstrates strong performance, delivering factual responses with linked resources. By combining technical breakthroughs, open-source accessibility, and an unconventional approach to AI development, DeepSeek is emerging as one of China’s most formidable AI contenders.
Moonshot AI: Pushing the Boundaries of Long-Context LLMs
Moonshot AI (YueZhiAnMian) is a Beijing-based artificial intelligence company founded in March 2023 by AI researchers Yang Zhilin, Zhou Xinyu, and Wu Yuxin. The company’s name draws inspiration from Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon, reflecting CEO Yang Zhilin’s admiration for the band. Moonshot AI specializes in developing LLMs capable of processing extensive text inputs, with a strong emphasis on long-form context and response capabilities.
Product Lineup
- Kimi Chat (October 2023): A breakthrough AI assistant capable of handling up to 200,000 Chinese characters in a single input, making it a leader in long-form text processing. Available via chat interface and API.
- Kimi 1.5 (January 2025): The latest o1-level multimodal model, achieving state-of-the-art performance on short-chain-of-thought (CoT) benchmarks. It significantly outperforms GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet on AIME, MATH-500, and LiveCodeBench, with improvements reaching up to +550%.
- Moonshot-V1-Vision-Preview (January 2025): A multimodal image understanding model that excels in OCR text extraction, image recognition, and advanced visual processing.
Leadership
CEO Yang Zhilin, a co-founder of Recurrent AI, previously worked at Meta AI and Google Brain. He earned a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University under the advisement of Ruslan Salakhutdinov. A key contributor to Transformer-XL, Yang’s expertise in extending language model context windows has been instrumental in shaping Moonshot AI’s platform.
Funding & Business Model
Moonshot AI has attracted significant investor confidence, securing $1 billion in a Series B round in February 2024, led by Alibaba with participation from Sequoia Capital China, Meituan, and Xiaohongshu. A subsequent $300 million round in August 2024, backed by Tencent Investment, Gaorong Capital, and Alibaba, raised its valuation to $3 billion.
Moonshot AI generates revenue through subscription-based services, pay-per-use API access, and licensing its AI technologies.
Outlook
Moonshot AI’s chatbot delivers high-quality responses with factual accuracy and linked sources. With its expertise in long-context language processing and a strong funding base, Moonshot AI is poised to become a dominant player in China’s AI landscape, challenging global incumbents with its cutting-edge models.
Zhipu AI: Advancing AI with Multimodal and Enterprise Solutions
Founded in 2019 as a spin-off from Tsinghua University, Zhipu AI (Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology) has emerged as a key player in China’s AI landscape. The company focuses on developing advanced LLMs and multimodal AI applications for both consumer and enterprise use cases, with a mission to “teach machines to think like humans.”
Product Lineup
- GLM-4.0: An open-source, end-to-end speech large language model, released in October 2024, capable of human-like interactions with customizable tone, emotion, and dialect.
- CodeGeeX: A 130B-parameter code-generation model.
- CogView: A text-to-image model that generates high-quality, realistic, and novel images from textual descriptions.
- AutoGLM: A voice-command-driven AI agent designed for smartphone task automation, capable of handling complex requests like ordering from local stores based on user shopping history.
- Zhipu MaaS Platform: A cloud-based AI service providing enterprise access to Zhipu’s suite of AI models, including GLP-4-Plus, CogView-3-Plus, CogVideoX, and GLM-4V-Plus.
Leadership
Zhipu AI’s leadership team is anchored by CEO Zhang Peng, a Tsinghua University alumnus. The company’s foundation is deeply rooted in academia, having been co-founded by Tang Jie and Li Juanzi, both esteemed professors at Tsinghua University. Tang Jie, who serves as the Chief Scientist, is also the vice director of the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, highlighting his significant influence in China’s AI research community.
Funding & Business Model
Zhipu AI has attracted significant investment from major Chinese technology firms and venture capitalists. In 2023, the company raised RMB 2.5 billion (≈$350 million) in funding, with backers including Meituan, Ant Group, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Sequoia Capital, and GL Ventures. A December 2024 funding round secured an additional $420 million, valuing the company at over $2.8 billion.
The company’s primary revenue stream comes from API access through the Zhipu MaaS Platform. In 2024, API revenue surged more than 30-fold year-over-year, with daily token consumption increasing 150-fold. The MaaS platform has attracted over 700,000 enterprise and developer users.
Challenges & U.S. Trade Blacklist
In October 2024, Zhipu AI was added to the U.S. trade blacklist, limiting its access to American technology due to concerns about its ties to the Chinese military. Despite these restrictions, Zhipu AI has remained resilient, maintaining strong domestic growth and continued support from major Chinese investors.
Outlook
While Zhipu AI faces stiff competition from other Chinese AI tigers, it continues to solidify its position in the Chinese AI ecosystem through a strong enterprise focus and cutting-edge multimodal models. However, its chatbot’s performance lags behind competitors, often struggling with precise, nuanced responses and occasionally mixing English and Chinese in its outputs. Nonetheless, its rapid growth and financial backing make it a formidable contender in China’s AI race.
Baichuan AI: China’s OpenAI Challenger
Founded in April 2023, Baichuan AI (Beijing Baichuan Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.) is a Beijing-based artificial intelligence company led by Wang Xiaochuan, the former CEO of Sogou. The company positions itself as China’s equivalent of OpenAI, focusing on AI-driven solutions in healthcare, education, and finance. One of its core missions is leveraging AI to tackle systemic issues such as the global shortage of skilled doctors.
Product Lineup
Baichuan AI has released over 12 large language models since its inception, spanning both open-source and proprietary categories:
- Open-source models: Baichuan-7B, Baichuan-13B, Baichuan2-7B, and Baichuan2-13B.
- Proprietary models:
- Baichuan4: A multimodal model with extended context and integrated search capabilities.
- Baichuan4-Air: Uses a MoE (Mixture of Experts) architecture to optimize costs and significantly enhance speed.
- Baichuan4-Turbo: Tailored for high-frequency enterprise use, improving response time and efficiency.
- Baixiaoying chatbot: Competing with local AI offerings like Baidu’s Ernie Bot and Moonshot AI’s Kimi, Baixiaoying has gained recognition for its superior search capabilities, functioning “like a professional” according to company claims.
Leadership
Baichuan AI is led by founder and CEO Wang Xiaochuan, who previously helmed Sogou, once China’s second-largest search engine before its acquisition by Tencent. The company’s core team comprises AI experts from leading global tech firms, including Google, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, Microsoft, and ByteDance, bringing together deep expertise in AI development and deployment.
Funding & Business Model
Baichuan AI has received strong backing from major Chinese technology investors. In October 2023, the company raised $300 million in a Series A1 funding round, led by Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi. This was followed by a Series A round in July 2024, which secured an additional $691 million, bringing its valuation to $2.7 billion.
Baichuan AI’s business model revolves around API monetization, offering enterprise access to its proprietary models. Additionally, it provides domain-specific AI solutions across healthcare, finance, education, and entertainment. The company also customizes AI solutions for enterprise clients, leveraging its foundational models to address specific industry needs.
Outlook
With a clear ambition to rival OpenAI, Baichuan AI is rapidly expanding its technological footprint in China. Its robust funding, seasoned leadership, and advanced AI models position it as a key player in China’s AI landscape.
MiniMax: Advancing Multimodal AI Solutions
Founded in December 2021, MiniMax is a cutting-edge artificial intelligence company dedicated to developing large-scale AI models and multimodal technologies. The company integrates text, voice, and vision capabilities into its AI solutions, positioning itself as a key player in China’s AI landscape.
Product Lineup
- Talkie (June 2023): An AI companion app allowing users to engage with virtual characters, including digital recreations of celebrities. The app gained significant traction in international markets, particularly among U.S. teenagers, ranking as the fifth most downloaded free entertainment app in the U.S.
- Hailuo AI (March 2024): A multimodal large language model consumer platform offering AI-generated text and music features. Expanded in September 2024 with Video-01, a text-to-video model producing high-resolution videos from text prompts.
- MiniMax-01 Series:
- MiniMax-Text-01: A 456B-parameter text-only model that surpasses Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash on MMLU and SimpleQA benchmarks. With a 4M-token context window, it processes over 3 million words in a single input – approximately five times the length of War and Peace.
- MiniMax-VL-01: A multimodal model integrating text and visual inputs, excelling in ChartQA benchmarks. While it rivals Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, it falls short of OpenAI’s GPT-4o, Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash, and InternVL2.5 in some evaluations.
- T2A-01-HD: An advanced speech synthesis model supporting 17 languages, including English and Chinese. It enables voice cloning from a mere 10-second sample and is available exclusively via MiniMax’s API and Hailuo AI platform.
Leadership
MiniMax was founded by Yan Junjie and Zhou Yucong, both former SenseTime employees. Yan led deep learning toolchain development at SenseTime, while Zhou spearheaded its algorithms R&D team. The leadership team also includes Yang Bin, a former Uber AI researcher known for his work in autonomous driving technologies.
Funding & Business Model
MiniMax has attracted substantial investment from leading Chinese technology firms. In June 2023, the company raised over $250 million, backed by a Tencent-led entity, bringing its valuation to $1.2 billion. A subsequent funding round in March 2024, led by Alibaba Group, secured $600 million, raising its valuation to $2.5 billion. Investors also include Hillhouse Investment, HongShan, IDG Capital, and Tencent.
MiniMax operates under a hybrid business model that balances open-source development, API services, and product innovation. The company releases select AI models with licensing restrictions to prevent their use in developing competing AI systems. It also provides API access to its AI capabilities, allowing third-party developers to integrate MiniMax’s technologies into their applications. Additionally, MiniMax develops both B2B solutions and consumer-facing applications, such as AI-powered role-playing platforms and text-to-video generators, positioning itself as a versatile player in the AI ecosystem.
Challenges & Outlook
MiniMax has faced regulatory challenges, including the removal of Talkie from Apple’s App Store in December 2024 due to concerns over unauthorized AI avatars of public figures. Additionally, the company has been accused of using copyrighted content in its training data by British TV channels and Chinese streaming service iQIY. Despite these hurdles, MiniMax continues to innovate and expand its AI capabilities, solidifying its position in China’s AI sector.
01.AI: Industry-Specific AI Company Led by Kai-Fu Lee
Founded in March 2023, 01.AI is a Beijing-based artificial intelligence startup led by Kai-Fu Lee. The company focuses on developing smaller, industry-specific AI models while balancing both open-source and proprietary solutions.
Product Lineup
- Open-Source Yi Models (November 2023): Released three model variants – Yi-6B, Yi-9B, and Yi-34B – designed for text generation, understanding, and complex reasoning. These models serve as the foundation for 01.AI’s large-scale language model offerings.
- Yi-Large (Early 2024): The company’s first closed-source model, built for high-performance reasoning and content creation.
- Yi-Coder: A specialized coding model excelling in code completion, editing, and long-context modeling, supporting up to 128K tokens. It also demonstrates strong mathematical reasoning.
- Wanzhi (May 2024): A personal AI workspace and productivity tool aimed at enhancing user efficiency.
Leadership
01.AI is led by Kai-Fu Lee, a renowned AI pioneer and former executive at Microsoft and Google. Lee is also the co-founder of Sinovation Ventures, a leading Chinese venture capital firm. The company has a team of over 100 AI specialists and experienced business professionals, many of whom previously worked with Lee at top tech firms.
Funding & Business Model
01.AI has secured significant investments, raising $300 million in November 2023 from Tencent, Xiaomi, Alibaba Cloud, and Sinovation Ventures, which brought its valuation to $1 billion. In August 2024, the company reportedly secured additional funding worth hundreds of millions from an international strategic investor, a Southeast Asian consortium, and other institutions.
The company operates under a dual approach, balancing open-source accessibility with proprietary solutions. Its smaller models are open-source, allowing for academic and commercial use while maintaining strong performance across various AI benchmarks. In parallel, 01.AI offers API access to its closed-source models, providing six enterprise-optimized APIs, including Yi-Large, Yi-Large-Turbo API, Yi-Medium API, Yi-Medium-200K API, Yi-Vision API, and Yi-Spark API. Additionally, the company develops consumer-facing AI applications such as Wanzhi, an AI productivity tool, and RuYi, a digital human solution, further expanding its reach in both enterprise and individual user markets.
Market Impact & Outlook
In August 2024, 01.AI announced that its Wanzhi productivity app had reached 10 million users, generating over 100 million yuan ($13.8 million) in revenue. With a strong balance between open-source development and enterprise-driven AI solutions, 01.AI is positioning itself as a key player in China’s AI sector, offering scalable and specialized AI tools for a range of industries.
Conclusion: The Future of China’s AI Innovators
The rapid advancements made by DeepSeek and the Chinese AI Tigers highlight the country’s growing prominence in artificial intelligence. These startups are not only competing with global tech giants but also setting new benchmarks in efficiency, multimodal capabilities, and enterprise applications. As China continues to invest heavily in AI research and development, the next wave of innovations from these companies could reshape the global AI landscape.
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Robot Talk Episode 107 – Animal-inspired robot movement, with Robert Siddall

Claire chatted to Robert Siddall from the University of Surrey about novel robot designs inspired by the way real animals move.
Robert Siddall is an aerospace engineer with an enthusiasm for unconventional robotics. He is interested in understanding animal locomotion for the benefit of synthetic locomotion, particularly flight. Before becoming a Lecturer at the University of Surrey, he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, where he studied the arboreal acrobatics of rainforest-dwelling reptiles. His work focuses on the design of novel robots that can tackle important environmental problems.