ModelBest
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ModelBest Inc. (Chinese: 面壁智能; Pinyin: Miànbì Zhìnéng) is a Chinese artificial intelligence technology company headquartered in the Haidian District of Beijing. Incubated by the Natural Language Processing Laboratory at Tsinghua University, the company specializes in the development of general-purpose artificial intelligence, large language models, and multi-modal AI technologies. The company is best known for its open-source "MiniCPM" model series.[1]
Native name | 面壁智能 |
|---|---|
| Company type | Private |
| Industry | Artificial intelligence Natural language processing |
| Founded | August 2022 |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Li Dahai Liu Zhiyuan |
| Products | MiniCPM series Luca (面壁露卡) VoxCPM Pinea Pi |
| Website | modelbest |
History
ModelBest was founded in August 2022, emerging as a commercial spin-off from the NLP Laboratory at Tsinghua University. In November 2023, the company launched its multi-modal dialogue assistant, "Luca," to the public.[2] The company has experienced rapid growth in its valuation and financial backing. In April 2023, ModelBest completed an angel round of financing led by the Chinese Q&A platform Zhihu, with participation from Zhipu AI. This was followed by a series A funding round in April 2024, which raised hundreds of millions of RMB from investors including Springhill Fund and Huawei Habo.[3] Subsequent funding rounds occurred in December 2024, led by Loongson Capital, and throughout 2025, involving investors such as Beijing State-owned Capital and CICC Porsche Fund. In January 2026, the company was recognized on the "Future Unicorn 100" list by Cyzone.[4]
Products and technology
The core technology of ModelBest revolves around the "MiniCPM" series, a collection of edge-side large models designed to run efficiently on consumer hardware rather than cloud servers. Notable releases include the MiniCPM 4.0, launched in June 2025, which introduced the proprietary CPM.cu inference framework to enhance speed. In early 2026, the company unveiled the MiniCPM-o 4.5, a full-duplex, multi-modal model capable of processing video, audio, and text streams simultaneously, designed for deployment in robotics and automotive systems.[5]
Beyond software, ModelBest has expanded into hardware and industry-specific applications. The company announced an AI-native edge development board, the "Pinea Pi" (松果派), in February 2026.[6] Powered by NVIDIA Jetson modules, the board is designed to support the MiniCPM models offline. Commercially, the company's models have been deployed in automotive companies such as Geely, Changan Automobile, and Volkswagen. Specific implementations include the Mazda EZ-60 and the Geely Galaxy M9, both of which integrated ModelBest's multi-modal capabilities in 2025.[7]