CEO Open Letter: Long AI, Long China, and Long Laiye
Dear valued customers, partners, and Laiyeans,
As we usher in the first working Monday of the Year of the Dragon or 龙Loong, I would like to extend my heartfelt wishes to everyone: Happy Chinese New Year, and may you have a prosperous start to the year of the Dragon!
In my last year's Chinese New Year open letter, I mentioned that "Work has changed irrevocably" and predicted that with the rise of ChatGPT, large language models would greatly influence the productivity tools deployed by enterprises in the short term, significantly improving the usability and effectiveness of Conversational AI, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) products, truly creating an "AI assistant" for everyone; In the long run, they will further penetrate into future work scenarios, potentially automating many knowledge-based roles, from marketing&operations, customer service, product design, to even software development.
After a year of AI's booming growth, many of these predictions have already become reality, reaffirming our belief at Laiye in the potential of our founding vision: "Building AI Agents for Everyone."
This year, being the Year of the Dragon or Loong龙, symbolizes strength, prosperity, and good fortune, as well as leadership and authority. Additionally, the pinyin spelling of "Dragon" in Chinese equals "long" in English, which carries the connotation of "long-lasting" or "long-term." In the investment context, it also implies being "bullish." Therefore, we believe that the Year of the Dragon will be a more favorable year for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs with abundant opportunities.
The consensus on the long-term prospects of AI in the era of generative AI has already been established. The latest text-to-video model Sora from OpenAI has undoubtedly showed we are racing towards AGI. I am fortunate to have spent nearly 20 years studying, researching, and venturing in this field. While there have been debates about whether to have long-term optimism about China recently, I believe more in cycles and trends. Many indicators, such as purchasing power parity GDP and electricity consumption, show that China is already leading globally. As stated in a previous McKinsey research report, "Many are looking for the next China, but the next China is China."
Laiye was born at the intersection of AI and China. Today, Laiye has successfully navigated through the most perilous initial stage of a startup, with its core products and business foundation firmly established, as well as a clear path to profitability and IPO. Last year, our losses narrowed significantly compared to the previous year, and our revenue continued to achieve double-digit growth, with the number of Fortune Global 500 and China Top 500 customers we serve reaching 250. Behind this transformation lies our focus and commitment to doing the right things.
This year, we will continue to focus on opportunities with high-certainty: achieving significant growth in key accounts and leveraging LLMs to enhance product competitiveness and business profitability. Given the many challenges facing the world, making any short-term predictions has become very difficult. How can AI startups survive and even turn profitable? There is only one answer: focusing on high-certainty opportunities.
However, if we look beyond to 3 years, 5 years, or even 10 years, the choices become clearer. In my view, it is about long-term optimism for Artificial Intelligence (Loong AI), long-term optimism for China (Loong China), and long-term optimism for Laiye (Loong Laiye). Wishing you all a prosperous Year of the Dragon or Loong龙!
