01.AI was founded in Beijing in May 2023 under the leadership of Dr. Kai-Fu Lee and became a unicorn within six months. Driving the frontier of generative and agentic AI technology, 01.AI focuses on the booming opportunity of global industry AI transformation. The company builds full-stack enterprise solutions, industry agent deployments and applications, as well as industry and sovereign model training. With strong executive and leadership partnerships driving AI transformation through a top-down mandate, 01.AI is scaling enterprise and sovereign AI deployments globally.
Released TrueNorth, the enterprise AI decision hub platform, and extended it into three applications: Boss AI, Investor AI, and TopSales AI.
In June 2026, Q.AI, a joint venture between Kazakhstan and 01.AI, was officially established. Led by CEO Dmitriy Mun, former Vice Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of Kazakhstan, Q.AI is responsible for advancing Kazakhstan's national AI capability development.
Formed a strategic partnership with Global 500 company Charoen Pokphand Group and established the joint venture Wanfeng Intelligence.
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee's AI education recommendations were incorporated into a Kazakhstan presidential decree, becoming a national-level strategic action.
01.AI's Neijiang industrial base officially launched, with Yang Xingping, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Sichuan Provincial People's Congress, unveiling the base.
01.AI partnered with Wuhan Qiaokou District to co-build Hanjiangwan Digital Intelligence City, creating a strategic highland for the AI industry.
Recognized as a National High-Tech Enterprise and a Beijing Specialized, Refined, Distinctive, and Innovative SME.
WorldWise Platform evolved to version 2.5 and officially released enterprise-grade multi-agent capabilities.
President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev met with 01.AI CEO Dr. Kai-Fu Lee and was briefed on the AlemLLM language model jointly launched by the Kazakhstan side and 01.AI.
Released WorldWise Platform 2.0 and launched enterprise-grade Agents with deep thinking and task planning capabilities, covered by core central and Party media including Xinhua News Agency and Beijing Daily.
Built on its self-developed end-to-end foundation-model technology stack, 01.AI released WorldWise Enterprise LLM Platform, covering model deployment, application practice, and model fine-tuning tools.
Released Yi-Lightning, a 100B-parameter MoE model that ranked sixth globally and first in China on the authoritative LMSYS blind-test leaderboard, setting a new historical best for China. In November, CCTV News interviewed Dr. Kai-Fu Lee and covered Yi-Lightning and ToB products.
Released Yi-Large, a 100B-parameter foundation model, ranking third globally on AlpacaEval 2.0 and seventh globally, first in China, on the authoritative LMSYS blind-test leaderboard, achieving the best Chinese foundation-model result at the time.
Released the open-source foundation model Yi-34B, topping the authoritative Hugging Face leaderboard.
For its sustained practice in lightweight industry foundation models, enterprise-grade multi-agents, and global industrial AI implementation, 01.AI was selected for the 2026 Forbes China AI Technology Companies TOP 50.
Recognized as a National High-Tech Enterprise and a Beijing Specialized, Refined, Distinctive, and Innovative SME.
For its outstanding practice in enterprise-grade Agents, 01.AI was named to Frost & Sullivan's 2025 Enterprise Services Annual Benchmark Agent TOP 10.
01.AI's WorldWise Platform was selected for the 2025 AI Pioneer Case Collection by the Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance.
01.AI's foundation-model appliance received the highest leading-level certification in the authoritative China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) evaluation of Enterprise Foundation Model Training and Inference Appliance Function and Performance Requirements.
Received the Forbes China Innovation Foundation Model Special Award.
01.AI was selected for the Hurun Research Institute’s Global Unicorn Index 2025 as a leading unicorn in the AI 2.0 foundation-model field.
The Zhongguancun Unicorn Enterprise Development Alliance released the China Unicorn Enterprise Development Report 2025, selecting 01.AI as a leading unicorn in the AI 2.0 foundation-model field. The recognition was also highlighted by Xinhuanet and the Beijing Municipal Government Information Office.
Named to the AI TOP 10 in the 8th Zhongguancun International Frontier Technology Competition.
Selected for the 2024 Forbes China Most Innovative Companies 50 in the foundation-model category.
01.AI was named a 2024 Future Star Emerging 100 company by Chinese Entrepreneur magazine.
Named by Bloomberg among six of the industry's most significant up-and-comers, and the only Chinese company selected.
Founder and CEO of 01.AI
In May 2023, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee founded 01.AI, an AI 2.0 foundation-model unicorn. In 2009, he founded Sinovation Ventures, which has invested in, incubated, and advised 13 AI unicorns. Earlier, he served as Google global vice president and president of Greater China, founded Microsoft Research Asia while serving as Microsoft global vice president, and held roles at Apple, SGI, and other technology companies.
Co-founder, responsible for AI+ strategy business, data, security, and related areas
Former Baidu vice president, previously responsible for group security and data, metaverse, and related businesses; founder and CEO of Anquanbao; former R&D general manager at Rising, leading the development of security applications serving hundreds of millions of users. He has extensive experience in AI product R&D, data security, and large technical team management.
Co-founder, COO
Former operating partner at Sinovation Ventures. Previously vice president of marketing and BD at Tudou, director of marketing at Google Greater China, and an executive in Yahoo's search and community business. She has extensive experience in technology-company operations, marketing, and startup incubation and holds an M.S. degree in Integrated Marketing Communications from Northwestern University.
Co-founder, Vice President of Sales
Former deputy general manager of sales for Baidu China and sales leader across 15 provinces and cities. He led the signing of a national training-ground project with a single-project scale exceeding RMB 6 billion. With over 17 years of entrepreneurship and management experience, and as former COO of Anquanbao, he has deep experience in 2B/2G sales, strategic account development, and scaled commercial management.
Vice President of AI Models and Professional User Products
Bachelor's and master's degrees from Tsinghua University's Department of Automation. He has nearly 20 years of technical and management experience in foundation models and deep learning, previously serving as algorithm lead for Alibaba Taobao and leading the development and platform system for Taobao's personalized recommendation algorithms.
Vice President of International Business and AI Transformation Services
PhD in artificial intelligence from the National University of Singapore. With more than 20 years of global experience, Dr. Ning has deep expertise in AI, SaaS, and enterprise transformation, having served as chief solution architect at Tencent and as partner and vice president at Frontis.AI and Convertlab. She brings experience across large platforms, startups, and international business.