Ex-ByteDance intern Keyu Tian raises ~$30M at $200M valuation for world models lab
zephyr_z9 · x · 2026-10-08
Keyu Tian, a former ByteDance intern, has raised $30M from 5Y Capital and IDG for his unnamed AI lab focused on building world models, at a $200M post-money valuation, per Bloomberg.
The funding comes with notable backstory: Tian was previously accused of sabotaging other research projects during his time at ByteDance, and he won the 2024 NeurIPS Best Paper Award for VAR (visual autoregressive modeling).
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