It used to pay the anchor to sing, but now it is paying Kimi to write. The times have changed.
Kimi started charging. Yes, but not completely. Generally speaking, the payment mode of big model products is nothing more than to C subscription system and to B API call, technology authorization, and overall solution. However, Kimi, who has received much attention from the market recently, has chosen to go up between left and right - choosing a mode that few people really intend to do, even if the teacher in the circle can think of it: Reward. Specifically, the new function "cheer Kimi" launched recently by Kimi is essentially a recharge portal, and RMB players can get priority in peak hours, which is equivalent to a vip channel. It used to pay the anchor to sing, but now it is paying Kimi to write. The times have changed. A new way to make money With this reward function enabled, the user can recharge Kimi and obtain the privilege of giving priority to Kimi computing power in some traffic congestion periods. Users who often use Kimi have probably encountered the prompt of "insufficient computing power during peak hours", especially during working days. After the payment function is launched, Kimi will tell users in small letters that they can manually obtain the "peak period priority" right under the prompt box of insufficient computing power. Click on the hyperlink to open a random payment option, with the amount ranging from 5.2 yuan (flowers) to 399 yuan (moon landing). To convert, the daily average price of the lowest gear is 1.3 yuan, while that of the highest gear is 1.09 yuan, about 84% off. Calculated by 365 days, the price of a one-time package year (moon landing) will be 76.65 yuan cheaper than that of only four days (flowers) each time. For both individual and enterprise users, this discount is not too high compared with the common annual Internet membership. Fortunately, Kimi's payment function does not force users to "make krypton gold stronger" like buying skin in kings. Lan Meijun, who often uses his luck in drawing cards to work, talked with Kimi about various complicated problems for a long time, but failed to directly trigger the krypton gold channel. Perhaps, this is more like a "hidden function". After all, Kimi really "hides" it: if you are lucky, as long as you do not trigger a reply indicating that your system is busy, such as "lack of computing power in peak hours", users cannot directly find a recharge port through any means. Even if you tell Kimi directly about "Krypton gold/reward", AI will explain to you seriously that "Krypton gold is risky, and reward should be cautious".
The system will pop up a payment portal only after you name "recharge your money", which is officially called "refuel Kimi".
It's not too much to boast about your conscience. After several attempts, it was found that Kimi would only actively remind users that they could pay for the right of first use when their computing power was really unavailable (indicating the peak traffic). But as mentioned earlier, Kimi can probably continue to generate results without spending money and waiting a little while or several times to try again. Unless there is really urgent demand, the payment channel provided by Kimi is more like a kind of "power generation for love" - Krypton will become stronger, and not necessarily Krypton will hit the computing wall, and users will not be forced to pay. In horizontal comparison, Kimi is really playing a new cash flow model, but the conditions required for this non mandatory payment to generate stable revenue will undoubtedly be more stringent. At least, users should have enough recognition and loyalty to pay for AI voluntarily. In other words, either the product can reflect sufficient advanced productivity, or the company behind it does not lack money, or the uncertainty brought by this reward model will not always generate considerable revenue in the current environment. So, what is the dark side of Kimi or AI start-ups? Probably all. the bright younger generation Kimi's popularity is obvious to all. As early as March, the server on the dark side of the moon was overloaded due to excessive traffic, causing congestion and even downtime. In theory, this is partly due to the insufficient computing power of the company's servers, but it also reflects the popularity of Kimi, which is far beyond the dark side of the moon and market expectations. According to the new general list of large domestic models in the AI product list, in April, the number of visitors to Baidu Library's built-in AI function ranked first, and Kimi ranked second with a value of 20.04 million, even exceeding the number of visitors to Wenxin Yiyan and Alibaba Cloud's Tongyi Qianwen. Data source: AI product list aicpb.com From about 156000 visitors when it was released in October 2023 to more than 20 million visitors a month now, Kimi, who is good at long text processing, quickly stands out from the big model competition of many big factories. The attention of the capital market to the AI track naturally inclines to the dark side of the moon. Recent market news shows that after the completion of a new round of financing of more than $1 billion in the middle of February, with investors including Ali and Lisi Capital valued at $2.5 billion, Yuezhimian recently received another investment from Tencent, Gaorong Venture Capital and other institutions, and the company's valuation has now exceeded $3 billion. At present, the investor camp behind the dark side of the month has covered more than 20 star institutions, including Ali, Tencent, Gao Rong, Sequoia, Meituan Longzhu, and Zhenge Fund, and has become a start-up company with the highest valuation on the domestic big model arena at this stage. At the end of April, Yang Zhilin, the founder of the dark side of Yuezhi, spread the rumor that he sold his shares in the company to cash out, saying that the cash out amount of himself and related personnel was up to 40 million dollars. The dark side of Yuezhi quickly denied the news, saying that the rumor was untrue, and that the company had announced its employee incentive plan to ensure that employees could share the company's development achievements. At the same time of refuting rumors, it also sent the signal that "the company has a stable long-term plan" to the outside world. Obviously, for the dark side of the month that is considered to be "the most OpenAI like company in China", the so-called "long-term planning" means the continuous advancement of AGI process in the field of technology, which corresponds to a higher rate of return on investment in the future from the perspective of investors. After all, almost all parties are optimistic about the dark side of the moon. At present, under the situation that the product is widely recognized by the market, the investors are willing to continue to invest and the camp is still expanding, it is relatively easy to understand the attitude of the dark side of the moon towards Kimi's payment is not mandatory and the path is unusual: First, test the willingness and scale of existing users to pay actively, and second, give a preview of the commercialization process. The confident Kimi felt that he would not lack customers, so he was not eager to make money.
