ME News, August 12 (UTC+8),Lin Junyang, former head of Alibaba’s Qwen, announced his new venture, establishing Pragmatik Labs (Pragmatic AI) in Shanghai to focus on developing the next generation of AI agents that bridge the digital and physical worlds.
Lin Junyang disclosed that the seed round was co-led by Banyan Capital and Sequoia China (HSG), with participation from Tencent and the Shanghai Future Industry Fund.
According to insiders, the total size of this funding round reached hundreds of millions of dollars, with a post-money valuation of approximately $2 billion; Banyan Capital and Sequoia Capital China each invested $100 million as co-lead investors, while Tencent invested $20 million.
Lin Jinyang previously served as the core technology lead for Alibaba’s Qwen series, overseeing the development of the Qwen models, building the open-source ecosystem, and the launch of the Qwen3-Max flagship model with trillion-parameter scale. He stepped down on March 4, and the following day, Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming announced the formation of a foundational model support team via an internal email.(Source: PANews)
