Hefei powers China's AI ambitions

HiDream.ai, established in March 2023, has rapidly ascended to global prominence. Its commercial video generation model competes directly with OpenAI's Sora, placing its multimodality tech in the world's top tier.

Serving over 20 million users and 40,000 businesses globally, it's frequently hailed as one of the most anticipated AI companies. In April, its image generative foundation model, HiDream-I1, topped the Artificial Analysis benchmark within 24 hours, making it the first Chinese generative AI model to do so.

Mei Tao, founder and CEO of HiDream.ai, credited Hefei's supportive environment in a roundtable meeting on July 2: "The city's excellent business climate, investment opportunities, and talent pool are vital to our rapid growth."

Looking ahead, Hefei aims to forge new AI development paths. The city will focus on scientific research, industrial manufacturing, and future industries to create high-value, replicable solutions and establish more exemplary "Hefei models" for the sector.

Pan Shaokang contributed to this story.