Lin Junyang, former head of Alibaba's Qwen, recently officially announced his entrepreneurial activities on a foreign social platform, announcing the establishment of an AI laboratory called "Pragmatik Labs" (Chinese name: Yuyan Technology) in Shanghai.
The laboratory focuses on the research and development of next-generation AI agents that integrate the digital and physical worlds, aiming to create a general agent that can work in both virtual and real-world scenarios. Its core slogan is "Agents for digital and physical worlds."
At the same time, Lin Junyang revealed the initial funding round, which was jointly led by Gao Rong Capital and Sequoia China (HSG), with Tencent and the Shanghai Future Industry Fund also participating. Previous market reports indicated that the funding round reached hundreds of millions of dollars, with a post-money valuation of about $2 billion; Gao Rong and Sequoia each invested $100 million, while Tencent invested $20 million.
Previously, Lin Junyang announced his resignation as the head of Alibaba's Qwen large model on March 4 this year, followed by Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming's internal letter announcing the establishment of a foundational model support team. During his tenure at Alibaba, Lin Junyang led the development of the Qwen series models, the building of the open-source ecosystem, and the release of the trillion-parameter flagship model Qwen3-Max.
With the establishment of Pragmatik Labs, this top AI talent's entrepreneurial project will accelerate the deep penetration of general agents into the physical world.
