China AI Star Kai-Fu Lee Hits Startup Headwinds in U.S.

In China, one of the biggest names in tech is Kai-Fu Lee, a Taiwan native and a bestselling author who used to head Google’s operations in the country. When Lee founded an artificial intelligence startup called 01.AI in Beijing in March last year, Chinese investors including Alibaba Group were so eager to back him that the startup became a unicorn just eight months later.

But in the U.S., where Lee is also well known, his success with AI in China has at times proven to be more of a liability than an asset. Lee has also helped create Rhymes AI, an AI startup developing models and apps that target English-speaking users in the U.S. and elsewhere. But when the Singapore-registered startup began fundraising earlier this year, some U.S. investors passed on the pitch partly due to their questions about Rhymes’ relationship with 01.AI, one of China’s major developers of AI foundation models, said three of these investors.