Hu Yunhua, a veteran from Microsoft and Alibaba, joins Zhipu and takes on the role of the person in charge of “Zhipu Qingyan”.
The growth of Zhipu Qingyan has passed the stage of new technology-driven customer acquisition. C-side products need professional leadership. Hu Yunhua, a former researcher at Microsoft Asia Research Institute, a senior technical expert at Alibaba DAMO Academy, and the chief data officer of Alipay China, has joined the large model unicorn Zhipu and taken on the role of the person in charge of the C-side application “Zhipu Qingyan”. Previously, he founded the AI company “Smarter One” in 2016, focusing on conversational intelligent marketing systems. As of press time, Zhipu has not replied to this news.
I. Hu Yunhua’s resume
1. In 2003, Hu Yunhua started an internship at Microsoft Asia Research Institute, known as the “Huangpu Military Academy of Chinese AI”, and officially became a researcher in 2007.
2. In 2012, he joined Alibaba DAMO Academy with the code name “Wu Gou”. During his two years at Alibaba, he was responsible for building recommendation algorithms such as shopping intention mining and matching optimization. He is one of the most representative talents of the Alibaba Mom recommendation algorithm team.
3. In 2014, he left Alibaba and turned to AI entrepreneurship. In November 2016, he founded “Smarter One”. Within more than a year, he secured four rounds of financing, mainly focusing on e-commerce artificial intelligence shopping guide solutions, such as pre-sales intelligent customer service.
II. The current status of Zhipu Qingyan
Currently, Zhipu Qingyan has more than 25 million users and is expected to have an annual income of over ten million yuan. Previously, the person in charge of Zhipu Qingyan had a technical background, enabling Zhipu Qingyan to quickly integrate model functions such as video generation, video calls, and emotional voice functions. However, as multiple major companies enter the field and competition in dialogue tool products intensifies, the growth of Zhipu Qingyan has passed the stage of new technology-driven customer acquisition. Continuously integrating model functions is having a diminishing effect on expanding user scale and improving user retention.
Data shows that among dialogue applications, ByteDance’s “Doubao”, which started late, has become the top one; Kimi has firmly remained at the top of startup company products and is growing significantly. Since February 2024, the growth of Zhipu Qingyan on the app side has slowed down. On the PC side, according to Similarweb data, the PC-side traffic of Zhipu Qingyan ranks second among the “Six Tigers”, but is ten million visits behind Kimi, which is in the first place.
III. The key to building products at present
Just as the three words “long text” became the starting point for Kimi to stand out, the ability to define and refine product categories has become the key to building product barriers at present. Insight and judgment on marketing trends and market hotspots are also necessary qualities for product leaders. Kimi and Doubao, which have outstanding growth performance, have also made great efforts in marketing. The total marketing investment from January to November 2024 exceeded 400 million yuan, nearly an order of magnitude higher than that of Zhipu Qingyan, which ranks sixth.
IV. The test faced by Hu Yunhua
Hu Yunhua’s resume in large company technology research and development and AI entrepreneurship can meet Zhipu’s expectations for the person in charge of C-side products. At present, how to do a good job in product definition and continuously improve user scale and paid conversion is the test faced by Hu Yunhua, the new product leader. Posted on December 26, 2024, at 2:34:09 PM, Thursday.
