Chinese version of CivitAI attracts large investments from Lei Jun and Zhu Xiaohu, with a listed company behind it.

"Giant Network Group invests in LiblibAI, China's CivitAI, the largest AI large model website in the country, with good vision!" On the East Money Information stock bar, an investor commented on the latest investment by the listed company Giant Network Group (002558.SZ). Recently, the AI image generation platform LiblibAI (Lobi Lobi AI) announced the completion of a multi-million yuan financing, led by Shunwei Capital (an institution under Lei Jun), Yinceli Capital, and existing shareholders Mingshi Venture Capital exceeding follow-up investment, with Giant Network Group entering as an industrial investor. This is the fourth round of financing completed by LiblibAI within a year, setting a new record for the speed of AI application financing in China. As a Chinese platform benchmarking against the well-known overseas AI model community CivitAI, the rise of LiblibAI is a key leap from technical breakthrough to commercial implementation of generative AI. Its positioning as "open source model ecosystem + modular tool chain" architecture has already attracted over 20 million models and image creators in just one year, seen by the industry as a benchmark case for the commercialization of generative AI in China. Founded in May 2023, LiblibAI is affiliated with Beijing Qidian Xingyu Technology Co., Ltd. Despite entering the market relatively late, it quickly broke through with a strategy of "lowering the threshold for using professional AI tools." The platform breaks down complex models like Stable Diffusion into modular tool chains, allowing users to generate high-quality images without programming knowledge, or even train custom AI models. This "technological reduction" directly addresses the pain points of content creators, driving explosive growth in its user base. The LiblibAI team stated that this round of financing will focus on building the creator ecosystem and technical research and development, accelerating the construction of the creative infrastructure of the AI era, further enhancing the platform's technical strength and user experience. "Text-to-image technology is an important application in the current AI technology revolution, with the potential to extend to more extensive fields such as text-to-video." Shunwei Capital partner Cheng Tian said, "Liblib, as a leading image model community in China, focuses on image models, and with precise market positioning and professional operations, it has accumulated a large user base and commercial achievements in just a year, successfully realizing network effects and steady growth." As an industrial investor in this round of financing, the participation of listed gaming company Giant Network Group has sparked market speculation. In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in the demand for AI technology applications in the gaming industry, from original artwork generation and NPC dialogue to 3D modeling, AI is reshaping the game development process. At the strategic level, Giant Network Group may leverage LiblibAI's AI creation capabilities to optimize game development efficiency and explore new models combining user-generated content (UGC) with AIGC. Regarding this investment, Giant Network Group stated that Liblib AI already has the largest Lora creator community ecosystem in the AI graphic creation track in China. Giant Network Group looks forward to establishing closer cooperation with the LibLib community to pioneer innovation in AI graphics and interactive content applications. The 20 million creator resources of LiblibAI may provide image content support for Giant Network Group's future games and AI business. Industry analysts analyze that investment in the AI track by gaming companies has become a trend, with Tencent, NetEase, and others also increasing their investment or independent research in AIGC, while LiblibAI's community ecosystem may be a key factor in Giant Network Group's differentiation competition. "LiblibAI's breakthrough confirms two major trends of generative AI: democratization of AI technology and the dominance of ecosystems." Analysts point out. CivitAI's success globally has proven the commercial potential of open model communities, and China's unique advantage lies in its vast creator base and diverse application scenarios. If LiblibAI can continue to balance the open ecosystem with commercialization, it may become a "new traffic entry point" in the AI era, and even give rise to a new "model economy" format. According to third-party data, the Chinese AIGC market is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan in 2024, with image generation accounting for over 30%. In this competition to redefine the content production chain, will LiblibAI be able to break through first with its capital and ecological advantages? The answer may lie in the next "hit model."