China News Network, Shanghai, February 7 (By Zheng Yingying) – At a press conference for the 2025 Global Developer Conference held on February 7, Yu Linwei, Member of the Standing Committee of the Xuhui District Party Committee and Deputy District Mayor of Xuhui District, noted that MIT Technology Review recently published an article titled “Four Chinese AI Startups to Watch Besides DeepSeek.” Three of the four companies featured in the article are based in Xuhui District, Shanghai.
Since the start of this year's Spring Festival holiday, discussions around DeepSeek have remained highly active, further propelling a number of leading Chinese AI companies into the global spotlight.
The article highlights four Chinese AI startups—StepFun, ModelBest, Zhipu AI, and Infinigence—as examples of companies demonstrating strong technical capabilities and global competitiveness.
According to the report, although StepFun was founded in April 2023 and entered the market relatively late, it has quickly risen to prominence through a series of successful foundation models. ModelBest, founded in 2022 by a research team from Tsinghua University, focuses on improving efficiency and aligning with the trend toward edge AI deployment. The company has released the MiniCPM series of models.
Also originating from a Tsinghua University team, Zhipu AI focuses both on foundation model development and on building downstream AI products based on its models, including the ChatGLM conversational model family.
Infinigence, another startup with roots in Tsinghua University, has been operating for less than two years but has already delivered notable results. The company focuses on AI infrastructure rather than model development. Its core technology is built on multi-source heterogeneous and software–hardware collaboration, enabling an “M×N” infrastructure paradigm that connects multiple types of models with diverse chip architectures, supporting efficient collaborative deployment of large models across heterogeneous hardware systems.
As more Chinese AI companies gain international visibility, China's AI sector continues to strengthen, contributing to ongoing innovation in artificial intelligence. (End)
