Chinese food delivery giant Meituan is set to acquire a generative AI startup, Light Year, started by its co-founder and former director Wang Huiwen.

 

Chinese food delivery giant Meituan is set to acquire a generative AI startup, Light Year, started by its co-founder and former director Wang Huiwen.  Meituan will pay $233.7M in cash for Light Year and inherit the latter's $51M (367M yuan) debt. The firm will pay $28M to Light Year's existing backer HongShan, formerly known as Sequoia Capital China.   Light Year had $285M in cash as of June 29.  Wang stepped down from the non-executive director role at Meituan on Sunday, citing health reasons.  Jefferies analysts Thomas Chong and Zoey Zong noted, "The acquisition enables Meituan to cumulate talents in large language models and deepen the exploration of generative AI opportunities ahead." Meituan joins the ranks of fellow Chinese tech giants, namely Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu, as they gear up to further develop generative AI services.