Gasgoo Munich- ModelBest has recently closed a new funding round worth hundreds of millions of yuan, led by China Telecom with participation from CITIC Goldstone and CITIC Private Equity. Entering as a strategic investor, China Telecom plans to collaborate with the startup on cloud computing, networks, and edge-side operations. By combining ModelBest's track record in deploying algorithms across legal, automotive, and education sectors with China Telecom's infrastructure, the pair aims to broaden AI research and application in complex scenarios.
This isn't the first time ModelBest has attracted industrial capital. Since 2024, it has secured backing from a roster of institutions including Huawei Habo, Loongson Capital, CICC, and the Moutai Foundation. With this latest round, ModelBest has formally secured strategic alignment with a national-level information infrastructure provider.
In the automotive sector, ModelBest's deployments have reached the mass-production stage. Its MiniCPM series of edge-side models are now integrated into vehicles from Geely and Changan Mazda. Notably, the Geely Galaxy M9 features the MiniCPM multimodal model, while a collaboration with Changan Mazda and Wutong Technology has produced the EZ-60 — the first mass-produced vehicle equipped with an edge-side model. To deepen its presence in in-car scenarios, ModelBest established a dedicated automotive business unit last July, aiming to shift smart cockpits from passive response to active service. Furthermore, the company has passed the ASPICE L2 assessment, becoming the first large language model firm in China to achieve this certification — a move designed to meet automotive-grade engineering and safety compliance standards.
Technologically, ModelBest advocates shifting focus from sheer parameter scale to improving "intelligence density." Its recently open-sourced MiniCPM-o 4.5 model achieves full-duplex, full-modal interaction with just 9 billion parameters, enabling low-latency real-time perception and active decision-making in scenarios such as embodied robotics and smart cockpits.
China Telecom's investment arm stated that ModelBest's work on model "intelligence density" and edge-side lightweighting aligns closely with Tianyi Cloud's vision to build an "AI-native" cloud-network infrastructure. The two plan to unlock value in government and enterprise services as well as smart terminals. Meanwhile, CITIC Private Equity noted that AI investment is returning to practical results, arguing that ModelBest has correctly timed the shift from competing on parameters to competing on efficiency.
Li Dahai, CEO of ModelBest, said the marathon toward AGI has entered its middle stages. This year, the surge in edge-side AI has become unmistakable, and ModelBest will continue to treat increasing model knowledge density as its first principle, sticking to an open-source strategy for its lightweight models. To date, its MiniCPM series of open-source models have surpassed 24 million downloads across platforms like GitHub and Hugging Face.
About Seeds Discovery:
Gasgoo's "Seeds Discovery" column is designed to create a service platform connecting startups, industrial ecosystem partners, investment firms, and local governments, providing deep empowerment across the supply chain. Since its inception, the column has been dedicated to uncovering standout companies, technologies, and business models that offer critical inspiration and leadership amid the wave of intelligent transformation, thereby driving the growth of industrial innovation. According to Gasgoo statistics, nearly every startup featured in "Seeds Discovery" has successfully connected with resources across the industrial ecosystem.
